Put away your cigarettes and barbecue lighters folks, because a highly flammable statement is about to drop, and there’s no need for anyone to get hurt here.
In another time, Bobby Lashley might actually have been something. Something in MMA. Something pretty good.
Now, make no mistake about what that statement infers: He’s not something pretty good right now. He’s a 38-year-old man better known for pro wrestling than his MMA career, a man who just beat up a faceless 8-7 collection of tribal tattoos live on Spike TV.
But it’s hard not to think that, had Lashley made the jump to MMA 10 years ago when he was leaving the ranks of collegiate wrestling as a would-be 28-year-old, there might have been something there.
He’s got respectable athleticism for a big man, and he’s shown an ability to improve against even the longest odds, particularly in his Bellator 123 win. That came after a year off, which could have been crippling to man of his experience and age, but it wasn’t.
His gas tank was better, his use of side control was sound and the times he postured up to strike on the ground were genuinely threatening.
Sure, he beat a faceless collection of tribal tattoos, but is that his fault?
All he can do is win the fights he signs for; if those fights aren’t coming against Cain Velasquez, there’s not really much he can do about it.
It’s not outlandish to imagine Lashley, all imposing physicality and sky’s-the-limit potential, rampaging through the regional scene right as the UFC was enjoying it’s first boom in the mid-aughts.
That Lashley was never a pro wrestler, but instead a man who saw a dearth of heavyweight talent in non-choreographed combat and elected to choose true competition over a fat pay check signed by Vince McMahon.
He’s a man who perhaps got into the UFC by 2008 instead of starting his career then, a man on the rise right around the time that pro wrestling’s Brock Lesnar was marching toward a heavyweight title.
He’s a man who maybe gets a few wins on prelims and undercards, showing that his striking is serviceable and he’s accented his wrestling with ruthless ground-and-pound and capable submissions, and all of a sudden, he’s a decent mixed martial artist.
This isn’t to say that Lashley was destined to be great, to be a world champion revered by all. It’s not to say that, if he’d jumped to the UFC back then that he’d be a surefire Hall of Famer today. Plenty of athletic wrestlers have come and gone, fizzling out on the end of another man’s fist—and those fists fizzle guys that much quicker at heavyweight.
But it is to say that, while it’s easy to poke fun at him for battering an overmatched opponent and padding one of the softest 11-2 records the sport has ever seen, don’t ignore what might have been.
All Bobby Lashley can be is what he is; in another time, that could have ended up as something pretty respectable.
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