Artem Lobov says he had a hard time realizing he had to retire from fighting.

Lobov is a fan favorite and is known as ‘the GOAT’ to much of the MMA community, but his record did not illustrate such. He finished with an MMA record of 13-15-1 and one No Contest along with a bare-knuckle record of 2-2.

After his TKO loss to Denys Berinchyk, Lobov announced his retirement from fighting which he admits was hard to do as he had to realize he wasn’t good enough to accomplish the goals he wanted.

“When I retired I finally had to come to this point where I had to say to myself ‘you will not achieve those goals, it will not happen for you, you were not good enough, you didn’t manage to get where you wanted to get,” Lobov said on The MMA Hour. “This is your time to hang it up Artem. Bye-bye.’ That’s why it was an emotional time. I wasn’t really ready yet.”

Although Artem Lobov says he had to admit he wasn’t good enough, he still did accomplish a lot in combat sports. He had a Fight of the Year contender against Jason Knight in BKFC and beat Paulie Malignaggi in BKFC, as well.

In the UFC, Lobov went 2-6 but headlined a Fight Night card showing his star power, which told BJPENN.com is what he wanted as to him, records didn’t matter. Instead, he was focused on putting on entertaining fights which is what he did.

“If you look at soccer, you will see more than half the teams have a losing record but every time they play the stadium is full. I don’t believe in undefeated records because losing is part of reality,” Lobov said on a past episode of Just Scrap Radio on BJPENN.com. “In real life, you lose a lot of the time but you need to keep going… When I come to fight they know what to expect, it will be violent, I will march forward, be aggressive, and throw bombs. This is an entertainment business and I provide it more than most.”

What do you make of Artem Lobov’s comments?