MMAVu

Former WWE wrestler Bobby Lashley is set to make his much anticipated mixed martial arts debut with Mixed Fight Alliance: There Will be Blood at the American Airlines Arena in Miama, Fl on December 13. No opponent has been named at this time.

Lashley was a three-time national collegiate wrestling champion, as was another former WWE wrestler, Brock Lesnar. Lashley was largely brought in to replace Lesnar, a larger than life monster of a man who could move like a cat. Ironically, Lesnar was brought in as WWE’s answer to Bill Goldberg. Lesnar at one time was heckled by chants of, “Goldbrock” while Lashley was serenaded with the nickname of “Black Lesnar”. Funny how history repeats itself.

Now Lashley is hoping to make as big of an impact as Lesnar, who is fighting for the UFC Heavyweight Title, in MMA, starting on December 13th. While both men possess similar physical appearances and have similar wrestling backgrounds, Lesnar actually started fighting at an earlier age than Lashley, as Lashley is already 32 years of age.

Time isn’t on his side, but he is training at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida and that’s a great start. Team members include Thiago Alves, Denis Kang, Thiago Silva and many others.

Lashley is actually signed to a fight contract with the AFL, but like all smaller promotions, they let their fighters fight in other promotions as long as it doesn’t interfere with their cards.

And no, I don’t think he looks as shredded and puffy anymore. At least I hope not…

Check out these snips from Patrick Cote’s manager, Stephane Patry, on his fighter’s expected 6-8 month recovery from a torn meniscus due to the UFC 90 fight with Silva:

For him to be six to eight months off with that kind of surgery means that there’s a lot of work to do in his knee.

Patry revealed that this is actually an old injury, suffered some six weeks out from Cote’s fight with Drew Mcfedries in January of this year. Cote had the knee put back in place, but the knee was never the same. He continues.

We knew for a year that he needed surgery, but the timing wasn’t right. Patrick wanted to go as far as he could with his knee because his career was going so well. Then three weeks before Silva, he called me from Boston (where Cote was training with Mark DellaGrotte). He was crying. He said ‘Man, I think we have to pull out. My knee, I just busted my knee.’ So he came back to Montreal. We went to see the specialist. The specialist put the knee back in place and told him: ‘Listen, you need that surgery, Patrick, and you need it now.’ And Patrick was like ‘Man, I have a title shot in three weeks. I can’t do that to the UFC. I can’t do that to myself, to my big chance. I’m not fighting a grappler, I’m fighting a striker. So can you do something?’”

Cote apparently got a cortisone shot to numb the pain, and continued on with the fight. The reason being he was fighting Silva, a striker, therefore the risk of injury was lower. However, if Silva was a grappler, they may have pulled out of the fight to reduce the risk of further injury. The fans however, were ruthless and booed both fighters endlessly.

While I feel Cote deserves a rematch, it likely will never happen due to these reasons:

a) Silva’s professional career winding down; he has five fight left on his UFC contract and he intends on riding off into the sunset at that point.
b) Silva’s desire for the big “money” fight. With all due respect to how amazingly tough Cote is, he’s not a big name like Rampage Jackson, Forrest Griffin, Michael Bisping, etc.
c) The negative reaction of the fans in Chicago. The UFC tends to cater to what the fans want, and they likely do not want a rematch.

Credit: Canadian Press