Bobby Lashley Explains Why He Never Signed With UFC

During his recent appearance on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, WWE Champion Bobby Lashley talked about why he decided to retire from MMA despite winning fights for major promotions like Bellator and Strikeforce.

"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.

"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 then revealed how envious he was of Brock Lesnar for building a gym next to his house and flying people in to train with him. Lashly, on the other hand, lived in Denver during his fighting days, and didn't have a full-time gym that he called home. This was another reason Lashley felt it was time to retire from MMA.

"I built an American Top Team in Denver and I was like, maybe I can bring people in," Bobby Lashley recalled. "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."

Lashley still wonders what would have happened if he'd made a permanent move to San Jose to train with the likes of Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier at American Kickboxing Academy, or to Florida to work with Dan Lambert's American Top Team.

By 2016, Bellator allowed Lashley to also pursue pro wrestling bookings, a partnership that led to his eventual WWE comeback. That contract flexibility would not have been possible in the UFC, and Lashley pointed to that as the primarly reason he never made the walk to a UFC octagon.

"I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I know that Dan [Lambert] 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," Lashley added. "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."

Bobby Lashley last fought in 2016, ending his MMA career with a 15-2 record that includes a spotless 5-0 record inside the Bellator cage. Lashley will defend his WWE Title against Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, Austin Theory, AJ Styles and Riddle inside the Elimination Chamber structure on February 19.

H/T to MMA Fighting for the transcription