Johny Hendricks isn’t interested in looking back into the past. Instead, the heavy-handed Oklahoma native wants to put all of his focus to the future.

The former UFC welterweight champion turned middleweight has no want or care to go back to the days of trying to make the 170-pound limit. Hendricks is only concerned with building traction in his new division and climbing the middleweight ranks toward another title opportunity.

Following his victory over Hector Lombard at UFC Fight Night 105 last month in Nova Scotia, “Bigg Rigg” has plenty to build off of. Hendricks bested the former Bellator champion with relative ease en route to a clear unanimous decision victory, and he’ll be looking to keep things rolling in a long awaited return to his home state to fight Tim Boetsch at UFC Fight Night 112 on June 25.

Where Hendricks once talked retirement, he’s now found a new groove as a middleweight, and he’s looking more forward to fighting than he has in a long time thanks to his new weight class.

“I don’t want to see ’70 ever again,” Hendricks said on a recent edition of The MMA Hour on MMAFighting (h/t Dave Doyle). “I’m officially done with it.”

“The reason why I thought about retirement was because I didn’t know if the UFC would accept me moving to 185,” Hendricks said. “You put such a legacy at 170 that not just the UFC but the fans, are they going to accept that? Are they going to open their arms and all this kind of stuff. That’s why I wanted to retire, because fighting was not fun. It was 12 weeks of hell and you’re like ‘why am I doing this?’”