UFC 145's Miguel Torres says he would have retired had the UFC not brought him back

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Miguel Torres nearly hung up his gloves late last year when he was released from the UFC. After Torres made an off-color comment on Twitter, the organization made an example of him and cut him from the roster. They've since brought him back into the fold, and he'll take on Michael McDonald at UFC 145 in April, but had they not done that, Torres saYS he would have been done as a fighter.

"When I got released I was extremely remorseful," Torres said in an interview with BloodyElbow.com. "I was very apologetic because I didn't know what I was going to do. Since I was a kid my main goal was to fight in the UFC and I finally got here and got released for some comments that I made. I didn't know what I was going to do."

"I didn't consider fighting on any other organization. I didn't consider going anywhere else. In my mind if I wasn't fighting for the UFC I wasn't fighting for anyone else. I would have ended up retiring and teaching at my gym and running my business."

Still, Torres says he wasn't feeling bad for himself, and took responsibility for his comments along with accepting the punishment, despite other incidents surrounding his going unpunished.

"I came up a certain way where things happen for a reason," he said. "You don't look and ask why didn't this happen to this person or this person did worse. You own up to what you do. If you do wrong you own up to it. I realized that I had messed up and that I had made a mistake and I didn't really try and worry about what other people were trying to say or do. Two wrongs don't make a right. What I said was wrong and I got punished for it."

Penick's Analysis: Torres has said all the right things since the release, and that's why the UFC agreed to bring him back. Instead of childishly fighting the release or trying to act like it was nothing, he apologized, showed remorse, and got back in the UFC's good graces. He'll have to walk on thin ice going forward, and his fans will have to hope that the release taught him a lesson regarding his Twitter commentary going forward. I believe he'll keep himself in check, and he still remains one of the best 135 lb. fighters in the world, so it's good to have him on the UFC roster, and as a fan I'm glad to see he wasn't essentially forced into retirement.

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_12636.shtml

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