by: Jack Bratcher
Robbie Lawler left the UFC in 2004 after two straight losses, first to Nick Diaz at UFC 47 by KO and then to Evan Tanner (R.I.P.) at UFC 50 by Triangle Choke. At the time he was still fairly young and brash.
Now think about this for a moment, since Robbie Lawler left the UFC in 2004 he has lost, count em’…one fight, that’s right, to Jason “Mayhem” Miller (where the hell is he?). And even that was two years ago.
After departing the Octagon, Lawler found himself fighting in rings and cages, at first bouncing around a couple of fights until he wound up at ICON where he won himself a nice Middleweight Title. If that wasn’t enough, with the birth of EliteXC in 2007 and again in Hawaii, he collected another Middleweight Title with his third round destruction of Murilo “Ninja” Rua.
Lawler went on to defend his EliteXC Title against Scott Smith live on CBS first in a very exciting bout that ended in a no-contest from an eye poke and then in a rematch where Lawler finished it in round two with a TKO by strikes.
Lawler has not been to a decision in five years and only twice in his whole career. He has greatly improved since his early days in the UFC. Is it time for the Hit Squad member to once again “Enter the Octagon?” Possibly. He hinted at this on his website yesterday:
“As everyone knows Elite XC is no longer around. I enjoyed my time working for them and I was treated really well. Thank you to everyone at Proelite for the opportunity to fight in front of millions of fans. Last week I spent at the UFC with Matt Hughes. The atmosphere was awesome as usual. I spent time talking to Monte Cox about what my options are. I also had a brief conversation with the very busy prez of the UFC. All that said I think I will be just fine. I will blog when i sign with an organization. Until then I will keep my self in good shape.”
Lawler is definitely a top ten middleweight and probably more appropriately top five. Is it possible he could be the middleweight the mma world has been waiting for to come in and give Anderson Silva the fight of his life? Could Lawler’s style be the style to give Silva problems?
Could Lawler really come in and collect one more Middleweight Title like he’s collecting one more rare baseball card? Only time will tell but if Dana is smart, which he is and if he wants to keep Anderson Silva happy, which he does, then Robbie Lawler coming to the UFC seems to make a whole lot of sense right about now.