A while back, we talked about TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bobby Lashley returning to the world of mixed martial arts. It’s a weird move to send your world champ to another promotion where he can potentially get injured, but Dixie gets what Dixie wants. Anyway, his Bellator MMA debut happened over the weekend, and it went about as well as TNA could have possibly imagined.
Lashley won his Bellator debut in convincing fashion with a standing rear naked choke in the second round. Not totally surprising, considering that his opponent Josh Burns is still winless in Bellator and only 8-8 overall. Now that he’s got a feel for it, Lashley is already looking to get back inside the octagon Bellator circle.
From MMAJunkie:
“I don’t know when the (next) fight is going to be because I have obligations to TNA, and at the same time have I have obligations to Bellator,” he said. “But we’re going to try to figure out something. Hopefully I can fight real soon.”
As far as Lashley’s next fight goes, he seems to be looking in the direction of Cheick Kongo.
This is going to be my last run. I’m going to hit it as hard as I can. Since I’m hitting it as hard as I can, you have to look at the bigger names in the heavyweight division, and Cheick is definitely one of them… If I have an opportunity (to fight him), yeah, I’d love to.”
This seems like the logical fight, but it’d be slightly more risky for the reigning TNA champion. Kongo has a more impressive record than Burns (22-9-2 overall), but his slumping performance led to him being cut from the UFC roster in April 2013. If this fight happens, it would still be a few months away, so we’ll see what the TNA title picture looks like by then. Hopefully Ethan Carter has the belt at that time and we don’t have to worry about a world champion getting KO’d or injured.
