One thing Tim Kennedy and I have in common is that, prior to The History Channel’s show investigating the matter, neither of us knew that there was even any doubt about what became of Adolf Hitler.

While there might be some debate as to exactly how he died in that German bunker in the spring of 1945, I’ve always thought the fact that he didn’t live to see 1946 was one of those settled matters of history.

Turns out Kennedy thought the same thing, which is why he wasn’t so hot on the basic premise of “Hunting Hitler” – an investigative series that looks for traces of Hitler and any secret compound he may have constructed in the German communities around South America at the end of World War II – when the show’s producers first explained it to him.

“I was like, wait, Hitler died in 1945,” Kennedy told MMAjunkie. “Everybody knows this. This is ridiculous, and I don’t want to waste my time with some stupid conspiracy stuff. But the more involved I got, and the more research they sent me, the more questions it raised.”

Eventually it raised enough questions that Kennedy agreed to travel to South America with a camera crew and a former CIA operative to investigate whether Der Führer might have made it all the way across the Atlantic to start a new life in Argentina after the Third Reich collapsed.

This turned out to be a pretty fun way for Kennedy to spend his days. It was also a fairly lucrative one, and in this job, he didn’t even have to fight anyone for his money.

That’s the kind of thing that has Kennedy seriously reconsidering his career as a fighter, he said. He’s made no secret of his discontent with everything from fighter pay to the UFC’s exclusive apparel deal with Reebok. He hasn’t fought since September 2014, and said he recently told UFC matchmaker Joe Silva that it would take “something significant” to make him consider stepping in the cage again.

“I have so many of these opportunities right now,” said Kennedy (18-5 MMA, 3-1 UFC), a former Strikeforce title challenger who’s ranked No. 7 in the NOS Energy Drink MMA middleweight rankings. “If you want me to fight, you’ve got to give me a guy I can’t wait to sink my teeth into. Otherwise, it’s not worth it. I don’t need the money. I make way more money doing this stuff, and I don’t get brain damage traveling to some of the most beautiful places on the planet with a $2 million-per-episode budget trying to find a war criminal. It’s way more fun.”

One curious thing about “Hunting Hitler” is that it makes no mention of Kennedy’s life as an MMA fighter. When he’s introduced in the first episode, it’s as a special forces soldier with experience using technology like drones and ground-penetrating radar to find people who don’t want to be found. If you didn’t know better, you’d have no reason to believe he also fought for a living.

And if his family had their way, Kennedy said, that part of his life would be over for good.

“They see that this is a blossoming career for me,” Kennedy said, “and they say, ‘Please do that from now on. Please don’t get hit in the face anymore.’ And that’d be nice. No more guys not getting off stools or guys injecting themselves with whatever. No more drama.”

If “Hunting Hitler” turns out to be a success – and it very well might, considering the fascination with both Nazis and conspiracies among much of The History Channel’s core audience – it may prove to be the beginning of the end of Kennedy’s MMA career. At the moment, he said, he puts the chances of him ever fighting again at “about 50-50.”

That’s not to say he feels like he’s done, or even that he ever expects to feel that way, he said.

“They talk about the retirement itch,” Kennedy said. “I’ve never retired, but I know I’m going to have that itch until I die. … I train two or three times a day, and that kind of scratches the itch. I’ve also been talking about doing some grappling competitions, and that scratches it a little bit too. But nothing really does it, like a big old stick scratching a bear’s back, like getting in there and fighting. And they know that. They use that. But I have to have a real reason to come back.”

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