UFC veteran, and former middleweight champion, Rich Franklin is one of the most respected members of the UFC roster at 38-years-old.

After his win over Wanderlei Silva at UFC 147 in June, fans simply expected a few fun fights, at most, from “Ace” before he rode off into the sunset and called it a career.

While many pundits weren’t thrilled to then see Franklin booked against former Strikeforce middleweight champion Cung Le at UFC on FUEL 6, the UFC’s debut show in China, it was tough to deny that it could be an entertaining bout.

Regardless, there was no way Franklin was going to lose to a 40-year-old kickboxer who was only averaging one fight a year since March 2008 … right?

Well, MMA fans looked on in awe as “The Human Highlight Reel” scored easily the most spectacular and violent knockout of his career as he dropped Franklin with an overhand right early in the first round.

There was no need for any follow-up shots since Franklin was out like a light as soon as the punch connected on his jaw.

Sure, we all knew Franklin wasn’t the same guy since Anderson Silva beat him for the second guy at UFC 77 back in Oct. 2007, but could one of the UFC’s greatest warriors really have fallen this far? Apparently he can.

Since that fateful night, the former high school math teacher is just 5-4, bearing in mind two of those wins are over Wanderlei Silva and a third over a completely past his prime Chuck Liddell (and does anyone care he knocked out Travis Lutter and Matt Hamill?)

To be fair, people are acting like Le is the worse fighter whoever entered the cage and that simply isn’t the case either. While he was a fairly ambiguous 8-2 going into his bout with Franklin, only one victory wasn’t via knockout.

Additionally, he avenged his loss to Scott Smith in impressive fashion and easily could’ve beaten Wanderlei Silva (yup him again) if he had simply unloaded punches when he had him hurt instead of fancy kicks.

Let’s even consider the old adage that this is MMA and anyone can get caught. Ok, so even with that being said, this is a fight Franklin should’ve won on his worst night and Le’s best.

We got Le’s best with Franklin’s worst and well … we saw the end result. Finally, consider that in five of the Ohio native’s last six loss, he had his lights put out (granted two of those times were by Anderson).

Rich Franklin: the sport of MMA appreciates what you’ve done for it but now is the time to call it a career.