Start with the sighs. They’re deafening. It is early April and Sam Stout won’t say it yet, but he is thinking about the end.
You ask if he’s done fighting. No. He just needs some time to regroup. A few months to catch his breath before committing back to the UFC calendar. It sounds reasonable, though you can barely tell he’s been in a fight at all. Unblemished by the left hook that dropped him, a Ross Pearson special that inched retirement one step closer in his head. He got caught, he insists. It happens. He was in a good place and he was ready.