Former UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks badly needs a win in his next fight in order to turn his year around.
Not to mention to extend his career.
During an appearance on ESPN's 5ive Rounds Podcast, Hendricks, 33, admitted that if he comes up short against Neil Magny at UFC 207 on Dec. 30 in Las Vegas, he probably shouldn't fight again.
"If I go out there and let's just say, crazier things have happened, and I lose? Well, I guess [it's time] to say, 'I'm done.'" Hendricks said. "I'm not going to keep fighting to hopefully find a person I can beat. At that point, it might be the fact your body just says, 'Hey, I don't want to do this anymore.'"
Hendricks (17-5) is coming off the roughest 12-month stretch of his athletic career. In October 2015, he was forced to pull out of a fight against Tyron Woodley because of medical complications while cutting weight.
In February, he suffered a one-sided, first-round TKO loss to Stephen Thompson and then lost in a three-round decision to Kelvin Gastelum at UFC 200 in July.
It has been a shocking fall for Hendricks, who won the 170-pound championship by defeating Robbie Lawler in 2014. Since that victory, Hendricks has split ways with his management, consistently struggled to make weight and holds an overall record of 1-3.
"After that last fight, me and my wife sat down and she said, 'Johny, if you're gonna fight like that, quit -- because that's pathetic,'" Hendricks said. "I said, 'I agree! I agree woman!' That was not how I fight.
"At that moment, I just looked at her and said, 'I still want to fight' and she said, 'If you're gonna fight, fight. I'm not gonna tell you that you can't do this, but [I will] if you don't train to win.'
"I know it sounds bad, and I told my wife this ... but I need to be an athlete again. And what does being an athlete mean? It means I have to be a little selfish again. I have to put my career sort of ahead of everything else -- and I don't like doing that. I wanted to be a father and I wanted to be involved in my children's athletics, school stuff like that. And then the next thing you know, you're down two fights."
Hendricks says he's making sacrifices in his family life and is back to being an athlete for this camp. He considered leaving the Dallas/Fort Worth area to train at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California, but elected to stay close to home to take advantage of the collegiate wrestling room at Oklahoma State University.
Hendricks was a two-time NCAA national champion wrestler at OSU and maintains a close relationship with longtime head coach John Smith.
As far as the weight issue, Hendricks said the UFC never brought up a move to middleweight and, although he'd enjoy a less restrictive diet, he never really considered leaving welterweight.
"Right around 172, 173 pounds is where it gets hard for me," Hendricks said. "And you guys have seen me my last two fights -- I'm not fat. It'd be different if I was fat. What I've done is back off weight training and do more wrestling, cardio -- where you're building muscle but not building weightlifting muscle.
"I still believe in my mind I'm the best welterweight in the world. I know I haven't proved it, but [I haven't been] training to my full potential because I'm trying to be more of a father than an athlete.
"My back's against the wall. I don't want to be one of those guys who fights until they're 38, 40 years old. I don't want to put my wife through that and I don't want to put my kids through that. That's not me."