Herschel Walker would like to make one thing absolutely clear: He is not done fighting.
Oh, he has nothing scheduled. Rumors abound that Walker, all 53 ageless years of him, could return in this new Scott Coker era of Bellator for one last fight against Kimbo Slice or Ken Shamrock or Tito Ortiz.
Or anyone, really. And that sounds just fine with Walker, honestly, because he’s not going to turn anyone down.
He trusts Coker and Javier Mendez and Bob Cook of American Kickboxing Academy implicitly with his career. Whatever they say, he’ll do. It has always been that way. So if Coker calls him up and asks him if he’d be interested in fighting Kimbo, well, the answer will be yes.
Walker hasn’t fought since 2011, but he continues to train at AKA because he considers himself a martial artist, and he'll always be that way.
He still eats his one meal a day, which he has famously done since he was a junior in high school because he didn't want silly things like eating to get in the way of his school work. It worked back then, and so he just kept on doing it, right through a famous collegiate football career and then on to the pros.
These days, he spends most of his time working with Patriot Support Programs and the Herschel Walker Campaign, making appearances at military installations and talking about the stigma of mental illness. Walker has publicly discussed his dissociative identity disorder since the release of his book in 2008. And he's got a new food company that takes up most of the rest of his time.
But still, he finds time to train every so often.
"I'd love to do one more fight," he told Bleacher Report on Friday morning. "Whether I get that or not, I don't know. But I'll continue to train whether I fight or not."
Walker started watching MMA back in the days of Royce Gracie, and he still watches today, watching pretty much everything he can get his hands on.
He watched Bellator back when Bjorn Rebney was in charge, but he especially watches it now that his friend Coker is the guy calling the shots. That includes tonight's card, which Walker is thrilled to watch. With two title fights and another excellent lightweight fight between Michael Chandler and David Rickels, it is one of the better and deeper non-tentpole cards Coker and matchmaker Rich Chou have constructed.
"Scott has done an incredible job. People respect Scott in this industry. People want to fight for him," Walker said. "One thing about Scott is that he cares about the fighters. He could have taken Herschel Walker—and yes, I am speaking in the third person—he could have paraded me out there and put me in all these different fights.
"But he brought me to LA and made me compete in a matchmaker bout. That's where you have five different disciplines against five different guys. After I competed there, he said I had talent. And he said that if I would commit to going to a great gym, maybe I’ll give you a fight. He wasn’t just trying to make money. The guy knows what he’s talking about."
Walker has been in St. Louis, where tonight's Bellator card takes place. After that he was in Los Angeles, and then in Texas, and then it's back to St. Louis. He is a constant presence at Bellator events.
Will he be even even bigger presence, perhaps against Slice or Bobby Lashley or another heavyweight? Coker loves his freak-show fights, and there's no bigger potential fight than having Walker fight on free television.
Walker, as always, says he's game. It's just up to Coker and to his teammates and coaches at AKA. If they say he can get back in the cage, well, he is getting back in the cage.
"Anyone they want to put in front of me I will fight. I won’t call people out, though. It’s not in my hands. I get in the gym and they tell me. Javier, Bob, Daniel Cormier, Luke Rockhold. They watch me. If they tell me I don’t have it, then I'll just keep training. But if they tell me I can do it, I will continue to step in that cage and fight."
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