Bobby Lashley thinks Fedor Emelianenko might be considering return

Heavyweight Bobby Lashley was getting ready to face Dan Charles on the Spike TV main card of this past Friday’s Bellator 138 event when he saw a sea of familiar faces.

Looking out into the crowd, he told MMAjunkie Radio, he spotted Phil Davis, Herschel Walker, and, most notably, Fedor Emelianenko (34-4 MMA, 0-0 BMMA).

“That was a tough one,” he said. “I was like, man, here comes the pressure.”

If you saw the fight, which took place at St. Louis’ Scottrade Center, Lashley (13-2 MMA, 3-0 BMMA) dealt with the pressure pretty well. After two rounds of getting tossed to the mat and punched, Charles (9-3 MMA, 2-2 BMMA) offered little in the way of defense, and referee John McCarthy stopped the bout.

“It’s almost like the big brother holding down the little brother,” Lashley said. “That’s what we were trying to do. And there was no way I was going to get tired.”

Looking back now, Lashley is happy he wasn’t thrown by the extra attention. But he now thinks there may be a reason he saw Emelianenko in the crowd.

“You can’t be an ex-fighter and not sit down and say, ‘Hm, I can do one more fight,’” he said. “He’s probably picking at people who make sense for him.”

Emelianenko making a comeback? The Russian and former PRIDE champ has been retired since 2012. Every time he’s asked if he’ll come back to the cage, he says no.

But Lashley can’t see why he would show up if that was the case. And if Fedor is coming back, he said, he would really like to be the one standing opposite “The Last Emperor.”

“It’s one of those things that if I made sense for him, I would love to fight that guy,” Lashley said. “That would be incredible.”

But the 38-year-old fighter, who also is a professional wrestler, is open to whatever the promotion has in store for him. There may be bigger things on the horizon, career-wise.

Like other MMA promotions, Bellator’s heavyweight division is more shallow in talent, so a title shot isn’t out of the question. But, as he pointed out, champ Vitaly Minakov’s status is unknown; the Russian champ hasn’t fought since May 2014.

“It just depends on what they want to do, because I don’t think anybody’s clearly there, because we haven’t seen the champ fight for some time,” Lashley said. “I don’t know what his deal is – I don’t know if he’s OK, if he’s coming back, and I know all the other heavyweights are just staying active until we find out. If it’s not against him, I want to get another fight pretty soon.”

There’s one Bellator opponent that would certainly be good for Lashley’s name recognition: Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson (5-2 MMA, 1-0 BMMA). The former bare-knuckle brawler just beat UFC Hall of Famer Ken Shamrock (28-16-2 MMA, 0-1 BMMA) and vowed to return to the cage to continue his MMA career.

A fight with a strong wrestler might not be very attractive to Slice, but stranger things have clearly happened in the promotion.

“Kimbo’s a good friend of mine, so that’s going to be a hard one to say,” said Lashley, who’s affiliated with American Top Team, where Slice trains. “But Kimbo’s a businessman, also. Him coming to Bellator, of course, everyone says they want the title, but he wants the fights that make sense.

“If that would make sense and it’s something he wants to do, then it’s something he wants to do. But right now, I’m not calling out Kimbo. But if they press the fight and they want the fight, it’s whatever the main people like (Bellator President) Scott Coker and (Bellator matchmaker) Rich (Chou) want. I’m here to do what’s needed.”

Check out the full interview above.

And for more on Bellator 138, check out the MMA Events section of the site.

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