Coach believes Johnson’s new career is with Rams, in non playing position

Anthony Johnson retired on Saturday, after losing to Daniel Cormier. When rumors swirled that he would be playing for the NFL’s LA Rams, the fighter shot them down authoritatively, but apparently, he will be working for the Rams in a non-player capacity.

That news was confirmed by his coach Henri Hooft during a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour.

I’m not going to go into details, because I don’t know the real details, but everybody sees his (social media) pages and it has to do with football, said Hooft, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. I don’t know, I didn’t really discuss the details, but he seems to be busy with this for awhile and enjoying it. It has something to do, totally different than with MMA, and I think if you really want to stop fighting, you really need to step away from it, because if you keep hanging in there, you’ll probably get lured back in there.”

It’s totally different than MMA. I think it has something to do with football. If you look at his Twitter and his social media, people will find out sooner or later what’s really going on.

Hooft was asked if Johnson’s next job was with the Rams.

I think so, said the coach. Listen, I’m a European guy. I know everything about soccer, but not much about the NFL. Sorry about that.

He talked about retiring and the end of his career for some time. I know he has an interest in other things he wants to do in life. We talked about it a lot, and we had an idea we talked about of getting that belt, and then probably dropping it in the middle [of the Octagon]. That was an idea that we had, that he had, and that we talked about, but I didn’t really know on Saturday that he would retire. But I knew about his feelings and I’m not surprised.

There was chattter on the Net that Hoost should have been by Johnson’s side when he retired.

I got a lot of bad s*** over me and everything,” said the coach. “You know how it goes with social media. When everything is good, everything is good. Like, I’m leaving my fighter? I’ve never left anybody, especially me and AJ. We’re very good together.

People just start spreading out stupid stuff, like him quitting the fight and just throwing the fight. All kinds of stuff. And it’s all bulls*** that has nothing to do with our sport. So I just feel bummed because I wanted to end this one with the title, and Anthony has all the qualities to do it, but he didn’t do it.

Right after the fight, I was on the cage and he came to me and said, ‘I f***ed up,’ something, and I said, ‘come on, man, I know it’s hard but get up, it’s already done.’ It’s what a coach says after a loss. You cannot just, at that moment, talk about stuff. I was at the cage and said, ‘keep your head up, come on, let’s go.’ Then I stepped off and it was very busy in the cage, so I walked back to put another shirt on.

When I was in the back, I heard that he was saying that he was retiring and looking for me and looking for other people, and I was like, ‘oh s***.’ I was on my way back, then I saw him at the curtain. … He cried with me and he talked to me and everything, then it really [sunk in].”