Just a couple of days removed from his UFC leave, Pat Barry announced today that he has inked a deal with the Glory kickboxing promotion.

During his time with the UFC Barry went 5-7 and after dropping two straight, he told the world that he’s just tired of wrestling guys and wants to get back to his roots.

Glory is the world’s leading kickboxing promotion and has built up a world-class roster while obtaining a lucrative Spike TV deal.

Barry spoke to ‘The MMA Hour‘ yesterday about the shift in sport:

“I’m walking away from MMA for now. It said I was retiring from MMA and people assumed that I was done with fighting forever and that was going to be the end of it. But, it’s not, that’s not what happened. I’m just taking a break, taking a timeout from MMA. Just stepping away from it, man. My last few fights, something was missing. Something wasn’t there, was a bit of love and attraction to wrestling and grappling to having to defend take-downs. Which is fine, that’s part of the sport and that’s what I signed up for, but my last two outings that I had, anytime you lose a fight and get up and say, ‘I lost, oh well, so what.’ It wasn’t so much, ‘so what,’ something wasn’t there.”

“Wrestling, doing jiu-jitsu for the sake of doing jiu-jitsu, that’s great, especially with a gi on, I enjoy it, it’s great exercise, everything. But when it comes to being in a fight, no thank you. I want to stand and hit each other and let’s see who has the biggest nuts in the ring.”

Pat Barry started off his combat sports career as a kick boxer. He obtained multiple world titles in Wushu, Kung Fu, Sanshou and kickboxing before getting picked up by K-1 in 2005 where he saw moderate success, making the semi-finals of the K-1 World Grand Prix in 2007.