Luke Rockhold’s rough stretch in combat sports does not seem to be letting up any time soon.
The former UFC middleweight titleholder hasn’t found much success since reaching the top of the sport more than a decade ago.
After his stunning defeat to Michael Bisping, Rockhold has managed just two wins across eight fights. Those losses have come in various forms, whether inside the MMA cage, boxing ring or wrestling mats.
The most recent came against Colby Covington in Florida, where the two headlined Real American Freestyle’s fifth event.
Luke Rockhold ‘happy to help’ after headlining early Real American Freestyle event
Since leaving the UFC following his 2022 defeat to Paulo Costa, his only victory has come in Karate Combat, where he knocked out Joe Schilling.
The other losses have been tough to watch. He suffered a broken jaw against Mike Perry in bare-knuckle boxing, and more recently took a hard knockout loss to Darren Till in August.
The 41-year-old was fortunate not to suffer that outcome at RAF 5, but a dominant loss to Covington via technical fall meant he could not achieve a return to the win column.
After the match, Rockhold responded to an RAF Instagram post and spoke about why he took part in the new wrestling promotion.
“Happy to help the sport,” Rockhold commented.
Colby Covington says he would have skipped UFC career for RAF
On Saturday, Covington returned to his wrestling roots by making a winning start to his Real American Freestyle journey.
Before he ever set foot in the octagon, he had already built an impressive wrestling career, earning All-American honours at Oregon State and later capturing the interim UFC welterweight title.
The two-time Pac-10 champion is glad to see RAF providing a new path for wrestlers. In fact, if the league had existed 15 years ago, Covington says he never would have gone into MMA.
He said to Forbes: “I’m so thankful that they finally developed a league like this where wrestlers could make some finances to go out there and do what they love to do.
“Because back when I was wrestling, if they had Real American Freestyle, I would have had no reason to go to the UFC. I would have just followed the circuit on Real American Freestyle.
“But unfortunately, this wasn’t around at my time. The only way for me to really make good incentives and make a good financial future for myself was to go to the UFC.”
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