Former NFL star Shawne Merriman isn’t opposed to stepping inside the cage if it makes sense.
Merriman started his own MMA promotion back in 2019. Lights Out Xtreme Fighting has been MIA due to the COVID-19 pandemic but the stage is set for its return. LXF 5 will be taking place this Saturday night (Aug. 7). The action will be held inside the Commerce Casino in Commerce, CA.
During an interview with DAZN, Merriman admitted that he’s considered competing. With that said, he’ll only do so under his own promotion and against a big name.
“Yeah, no question. No question about it. Even sometimes now when I go, and I spar with guys that are in Bellator, in UFC or whatever, after we get done if they haven’t seen me train before, the first thing they ask me is, ‘When are you gonna fight?’ For me, I respect this for too damn much to go and try something out. I’m all in, or I’m not doing it all. For me, it’s great to go and spar on a Friday or a Wednesday or something like that and get some work with guys because it keeps me going. But it’s not one of these things you got to try out. You can play football. You can play basketball. You ain’t playing fighting. So when you do that, I realized that these guys and women are training their ass off sometimes twice, three times a day, six, seven days a week. You better be ready because it’s a different kind of mentality when you step in there with someone who does this sh*t for a living. I say it all the time.
“I said, ‘Look, you’re going in there, you’re playing around with people who do this to feed their families. The mentality is different. I love going in, and I’ll get after it. I’m going to go three or three five-minute rounds of sparring in. Some days get a little crazier than others depending on who you who you’re training with. But for the most part, I feel better when I do that. My body feels good. I feel active. I feel healthy and alive. But to actually do it big, the only place I would fight is Light Out. If there was a big enough guy that people want to see, whoever it is, and it made sense, and I know that people would buy pay-per-views and tune into it, I’ll start training tomorrow in Lights Out. Until then, I enjoy promoting all these men and women that fight for Lights Out Extreme Fighting.”
Shawne Merriman was initially set to make his bare-knuckle boxing debut in 2018. That plan went awry due to a contract dispute with World Bare Knuckle Fighting Federation.
LXF 5 will be headlined by a lightweight bout between Erick Gonzalez and Samuel Alvarez. The card will also feature Leon Shahbazyan vs. Moses Murrietta, Arnold Jimenez vs. Marcos Bonilla, and Mike Segura vs. Dominic Clark.
