WWE champion Bobby Lashley explains his decision to walk away from MMA

Bobby Lashley, 45, is an American professional wrestler, mixed martial artist and armed forces veteran.

Lashley last fought in 2016, ending his pro fighting career with a 15-2 record which includes a 5-0 record in the Bellator cage. While partnering with Bellator, Lashley was allowed to compete while also pursuing pro wresting bookings.

Bobby Lashley, while appearing on ‘The MMA Hour’ discussed why it was no longer feasible to continue competing in the MMA even though he’s won fights for major promotions like Strikeforce and Bellator.

“I think because when I came into it, I came into it with the wrong mind frame,” Lashley said. “When I originally came into fighting, I came into it saying I want to do one fight. Then I won one fight, then another fight, and then another fight, and then all these things started getting thrown at me. The hardest thing with me with fighting was I had all these fights, I think I had 18, 19 fights, something like that, there was some that were kind of like smaller fights that didn’t really get put on my Sherdog record, but I didn’t ever have an actual training camp. Never had a training camp.”

Continuing Bobby Lashley said (h/t MMAFighting):

“That was one thing when I was like, ‘Man, can we run for the title? I want to run for the title.’ I’m a single father, so I had my kids, and I what I was literally doing is I was having to run down to [train with Josh] Barnett. I did some work with Barnett, I was running down to American Top Team and I would be there for a week. And then I had to run home and I was with my kids and then I’d run back and I’d get a little bit of sparring in a couple of days here or there and Josh would come up and meet me and he’d do a little bit with me. So my camps were just so broken and as a fighter, once you start moving up the levels, you really have to have a game plan. You’ve really got to have a team, you’ve really got to have everything together.”

Lashley, during his fighting days, lived in Denver and says he didn’t have a full-time gym that he called home.

“I built an American Top Team in Denver and I was like, maybe I can bring people in,” Lashley said. “But now these are a lot of expenses that I was taking on and now I’m running a gym. Now I’m selling my cardio kickboxing class and trying to push my crossfit courses and I was like alright, this is pulling me further away from what I’m trying to accomplish.”

“I was like, if I want to do this thing full time, get in the UFC and make a run or stay with Bellator and run for that title, I’ve got to put it all together and it was challenging. I didn’t find a way that I could do it and I didn’t want to take any time away from my kids, so I was kind of in an awkward situation.”

Speaking about not making the move to the Octagon, Bobby Lashley explained that flexibility is not possible in the UFC:

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I know that Dan had talked with Dana at one time and Dana he was fair with it, he said, ‘You know we can’t offer him a huge contract, but we will give him something that he can get his foot in the door and kind of prove himself,’” Lashley said. “That’s all I knew and then when I talked with Dan about it — Dan’s a huge pro wrestling fan — Dan was like, ‘They want you to sign everything. There’s no more pro wrestling. Are you ready to shut the doors on pro wrestling?’ I was like, ‘Golly.’ You can’t offer me a contract and say, ‘Yeah we bring him in, but he needs to shut all of that down and get small money.’ Because the wrestling is something that I knew that I could really make some good money on long term. So I couldn’t take a small contract to prove myself where I had pro wrestling where I’d already proven myself and that was always my money bag that I could always go back to. So I really couldn’t do it.”

“Everything was left up in the air for me with Coker and I wish I could have done that with Dana, but I understand that you can’t do that in the UFC. He’s not gonna let anybody have that part-time, do-whatever-you-want kind of contract and that’s what I needed and that’s what he wasn’t willing to give.”

While you can never rule anything out in the combat sports world, it appears Lashley has finished competing professionally unless WWE makes an exception.

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