How a conversation with his mother convinced Kevin Lee to unretire – and why he's back at lightweight

Kevin Lee has opened up on his decision to come out of retirement.

Lee (19-8 MMA, 11-8 UFC) announced plans to come back just six months after hanging up his gloves following a 55-second submission loss to Rinat Fakhretdinov under the UFC banner in July. The 31-year-old revealed that a conversation with his mother is what prompted his decision to fight again.

“It’s a long time coming,” Lee told Middle Easy. “I’ve probably been thinking about it for the last two months or so. The one that really kind of pushed me over the edge was a conversation that I had with my mom. She said that the smile in my soul is gone. I remember repeating it back to her to to make sure I heard it right. I was like, ‘Man, that’s deep.’

“My takeaway from it was just that I needed to fight again. It had already kind of been, like, in my mind. It had already been something that I keep being driven to. When she said that, I was like, ‘OK, what am I going to do?’ I’m 31 now. If I’m going to make a run, now is the time, and I don’t want to live with no regrets. I really need to see this thing through. I need to see my life through and feel good for myself.”

Lee said he regrets taking the Fakhretdinov fight. He claims he kept re-tearing his left knee throughout camp and ended up having to undergo surgery in September.

“It was a dumb fight,” Lee said. “It was stupid. I knew my knee was torn to shreds the entire time. It was the worst training camp that I ever had. I couldn’t even spar or go hard in the training camp at all. That fight was purely just out of pride and ego of me being cut from the UFC and not on the terms that I would have liked. Then, me kind of getting this opportunity and letting my pride take over and say that I’ll do it. In hindsight, it was a terrible decision.”

After competing in catchweight and welterweight bouts, Lee intends to return at lightweight. It’s the weight class he’s realized the most success in, where he challenged for the interim lightweight title in 2017 and scored a spectacular head-kick knockout of formerly unbeaten Gregor Gillespie at UFC 244.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to cut weight,” Lee said. “If you want to compete, you’re going to have to cut the weight, and that’s what it is for me. I can make the weight. That’s where my most success comes from. That’s what my frame is built for.

“Me trying to pack on the pounds and go to 170, not only is it bad for my joints and bad for my knees, it made me slower and it was an unsuccessful. I’m glad that I did it to know what would happen, but, yeah, I’m kind of happy to to leave that behind me.”