Dana White Thinks Travis Browne Should Retire Following Latest Defeat

Known best for his media-heavy relationship with Ronda Rousey, UFC heavyweight Travis Browne nevertheless had his back against the proverbial wall when he met veteran mat technicican Oleksiy Oliynyk on the preliminary card of last night’s (Sat., July 8, 2017) UFC 213 from Las Vegas.

“Hapa” went into the fight with losses in his three prior bouts and four of his last five, with three T/KO defeats. The Hawaiian knockout artist was still ranked inside the top 10, a testament to the overall lack of depth at heavyweight rather than his recent results in the octagon. He nearly got back into the win column against Oliynyk last night, yet as he’s shown in recent losses, the onetime contender seems to let his opponent back in the fight.

Browne tagged his Russian counterpart with some big shots early, but couldn’t put him away and ended up getting constricted by the longtime submission specialist when he foolishly took him on in his area of strength. A fourth stoppage in six fights now blurring his record, Browne had made an alarming fall from grace compared to his torrid stretch of three straight “Knockout of the Night” performances in 2013.

That had Browne on the edge of title contention, but a one-sided beating in an April 2014 UFC on FOX main event against former champion Fabricio Werdum sent him crashing back down to Earth. Browne then decided to leave the world-renowned Jackson-Winkeljohn MMA to go to California and train at Edmond Tarverdyan’s Glendale Fight Club. He met and found love with Rousey there, but his fighting career has clearly taken a steep dive.

Dana White spoke up about just that during the UFC 213 post-fight presser, pointing out the unforgiving nature of the UFC and its fighters (quotes via MMA Fighting):

“It’s crazy,” White told reporters at the UFC 213 post-fight conference. “Travis Browne was one of those guys that before the ‘Bigfoot’ fight – and even in the ‘Bigfoot’ fight, I mean he got injured, he blew his hamstring, something weird happened to him – in that fight, the guy looked like he was going to be a world champion. This is one of those sports that you just never know. One minute you’re absolutely unbeatable or unstoppable and the next minute you can’t win a fight.”

Once feared as one of the most powerful fighters in the game, Browne now appears stiff and robotic in his stand-up, and has also come to show the aforementioned tendency to let his opponents back into the fight like he did in a recent loss to Derrick Lewis and again to Oliynyk at UFC 213. Most are quick to point to Tarverdyan’s tendency to ruin MMA fighters’ records as the main culprit for the fall, but ultimately it’s on the fighter to perform, and perhaps Browne has lost some of the focus that’s required to stay at the absolute top of the UFC.

There will always be a short window to be truly elite in MMA, and as White says, you never know just when it will close. Even if “Hapa” did decide to call it quits with a long climb back to relevancy staring him in the face, his life would be just fine getting married and raising a family with the most popular women’s MMA legend of all-time. The losses building, White offered the belief that Browne should hang up his gloves:

“I think that Travis should retire,” White said.