In professional wrestling and mixed martial arts, versatility and adaptability to any environment are important. Blake “Bulletproof” Troop has navigated those waters for some time now, whether in the National Wrestling Alliance or the cage.
SlamWrestling.net caught up with Troop recently, and he recently moved back to California from Florida.
“I moved back to Los Angeles,” Troop said, “to train for this fight that I have coming up in December.
“We had some difficulties coming to terms on the contract in terms of doing the commentary and fighting and so forth,” Troop continued. “Making sure everything lined up appropriately for it to be worth me making my return to the cage.”
As far as his time in the NWA, Troop was embroiled in a feud with his former SVGs tag team partner, Jax Dane.
He even talked about his battle for the then-vacant NWA National title, when he faced Thom Latimer. “I ended up almost beating Thom Latimer for it,” he recalled. “I got distracted [and] tried to hit him with my finish. He dodged and then hit me with his finish instead.”
Despite the losses, Troop says those in the NWA see potential. Troop mentioned he was featured in some television tapings in Tampa, Florida, in September of this year along with the Samhain 2 signature live event held in Sarasota, FL, which has yet to broadcast on the social media platform, X (formerly Twitter).
As for the experience those last few months, Troop feels optimistic. “They’re putting me in a position at NWA where I’m a title contention guy building his way up through the ranks.”
Troop spoke about how he wanted to move back to focus on MMA again and talked with NWA owner Billy Corgan about it.
“Billy was very supportive of me taking time to focus on fighting,” he said, “and mentioned that he’d be interested in utilizing me, [building up] the accolade of Blake ‘Bulletproof’ Troop; our street fighting, heavyweight, mixed martial arts champion on the show, which is really cool.
“And as you know,” Troop added, “I’m trying to blend my brand as much as possible in all of the different realms.”
One of those things will be a return to the mixed martial arts promotions, Lights Out Xtreme Fighting (LXF), where he will face Kelvin “The Big Hit” Fitial in a heavyweight title bout on December 7.
But that’s not the only thing interesting about this night. “[I’ll be] commentating the first half of the card and then fighting the main event for the belt,” Troop said. “There’s a lot of things that make it a much bigger deal within the combat sports world.”
While having wrestlers get in the squared circle and then do commentary is nothing new in professional wrestling, this is believed to be a first for a mixed martial arts fighter to take on two roles, especially on the same night. One would imagine the stress of trying to prepare physically, but also mentally for the dual tasks.
Troop, however, feels confident in his abilities that night. “I believe that it will put my brain in that much more of a strategic position because I’m gonna beat this guy strategically,” he explained. “Like I used to come out and just fight people.”
So how hard is it to switch from commentate to combat?
“I think the biggest thing is that I’m going to already have my brain in strategic fight mode. I’m not doing other things,” Troop said. “I don’t think there’s a drastic change to everything. I’ve trained so much for so long that I could just turn that on. That’s the easy part of it. I think having my brain in a very technical mindset for hours leading up to the fight already, it’s gonna be massively advantageous for me.
“I think that we will see the most evolved ‘Bulletproof’ Troop, the competitor that we’ve ever seen because of this increase in my fight IQ as we call it in fighting.”
Troop already joins a select group of MMA fighters who have crossed over from cage fighting to the squared circle, like “Filthy” Tom Lawlor and Josh Barnett, to name a few. Troop even dropped this tidbit when Barnett’s name was mentioned in the interview. “Josh has already expressed interest in using me on a potential future [GCW] Bloodsport card inside the ring,” he said with pride.
“I commentated the Josh Barnett versus Jon Moxley card during the WrestleMania Tampa shows,” Troop recalled. “I’m a big fan of Bloodsport and that is absolutely a flavor of professional wrestling that I’d like to sink my teeth into. And I believe that after this fight, we will see that in the near future.”
As for what the future holds, it looks to be a promising year for Blake “Bulletproof” Troop. “There’s, a chance that I find myself in Japan potentially,” he said, “and there’s a chance that I find myself in Houston, Texas, training at Reality Wrestling with [WWE Hall of Famer] Booker T. There’s a chance that you find me in Lexington, Kentucky, training with Dr. Tom Prichard.
“I’m gonna get through this fight,” Troop concluded, “[and] in a few weeks take a couple weeks off and evaluate and see exactly what I’m gonna do.”
No doubt Troop will be able to adapt to any scenario of combat sports.
Lights Out Extreme Fighting 21 will be held at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, CA. You can catch the action on the LightsOut Sports TV app on any streaming device.
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