Chris Lytle had one of the more unlikely successful UFC careers in memory. A fighter who never felt particularly “great” at any aspect of the fight game, even with a limited pro boxing career that the announcers always oversold a bit.
Lytle’s 10-10 UFC record is a bit misleading as he went 3-7 in his first ten UFC bouts before flipping that record to close out his career, including becoming an almost guaranteed bonus winner, including five fight of the night bonuses in his last eight bouts.
He retired after a thrilling win over Dan Hardy, but in speaking with BJPenn.com, Chris left the door open for a possible return, but only in very specific circumstance:
“I can’t say it’s always closed. I’ve made this comment to them before, I said, ‘hey man, I’m not willing to put in eight weeks of training but if you called me and said, hey, I have this possible fight Chris. Somebody backed out and we need you in a week. We need you in five days, we need you here. I could take it. There’s a couple guys I do want to fight on short notice because I wouldn’t have to spend all that time away from my family and, like I said, I’m still training some, I still feel like I’m in good shape right now. And as veteran I know how to condition myself to where I could last three rounds. So, you never know. If you have something last minute, let me know. That’s the only way I could see it. If it was like two weeks before a fight or something, but you give me two months I don’t think I could…I mean, I can’t say never. There is a couple possibilities if they said, if Dana or somebody came to me and said, hey Chris, I would really like you to do this, take this certain fight for one reason. I’d say ok, I can do one but I’m not planning on coming back long term. I could do something possibly but I definitely don’t see that happening but you never can tell.”
That’s not exactly the standard line of thinking for coming back as most guys would want time to shake off the rust in the gym. But Lytle isn’t the normal kind of fighter.