It's nothing new for players to retire in the NFL but it's quite another to do so in the middle of the season. But that's what happened when Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez decided to call it quits back in November 2022 during Week 9 of the past NFL season. However, to put things in full perspective, Martinez was coming off a serious ACL injury the previous year, but he had been playing well the last 4 games prior to his retirement announcement.
What made it even more shocking, was the fact that Martinez revealed that he would be moving on to focus on his passion, selling Pokemon cards. He shared that he had recently sold a rare card for $675,000 (a Pokemon Pikachu illustrator card) and believed that he had the ability to jump into an untapped market.
After launching his company in July 2022 (Blake’s Breaks), Martinez focused on it full-time in November, following his retirement. Since then, he's made over $5 million in revenue according to CNBC, selling on WhatNot.
It seems that during the pandemic, Martinez used his NFL earnings (Martinez made $ 28 million over his 6-year career) to finance the cost of building up his company's inventory, he spent tens of thousands of dollars on 36-card Pokemon packs.
Speaking to CNBC, Martinez said that he doesn't have any regrets about retiring from the NFL when he likely could've played for another 4-6 years.
"Every single day when I wake up, my shoulder doesn’t hurt and my back doesn’t hurt anymore,” Martinez stated. “When all that hurts are my fingers from opening, like, 1,000 packs of cards per day, I think, ‘I’m going to keep doing this.’”
Martinez finished in a 3-way tie for most tackles in the NFL in 2017, finished second in 2018 and 2019, and third in 2020.