Cain Velasquez has officially made the move from MMA to pro wrestling. According to ESPN, Velasquez has signed a multi-year contract with the WWE. He also informed the UFC on Friday he is retiring from in-ring action. This will likely be confirmed by the WWE later today.
“WWE is expected to make the announcement about Velasquez’s future at a news conference at T-Mobile Arena on Friday. Tyson Fury, boxing’s lineal heavyweight champion, will also be at the news conference for a potential future WWE match, Marc Raimondi of ESPN wrote.
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This is shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone who follows Velasquez since he has a passion for pro wrestling.
“This is definitely my focus,” Velasquez said last week. “My family is into it. They love it. They’re super-excited. I haven’t seen them excited over something like this in a while. It’s cool.”
Velasquez made his WWE debut last week on the Fox premiere of Friday Night Smackdown. At the end of the show, the former UFC heavyweight champion took out WWE Champion Brock Lesnar. Velazquez and Lensar have history with each other as they faced off for the UFC heavyweight championship in 2010 where Velasquez came out on top.
Last month, Velasquez spoke to PopCulture.com about pro wrestling, talking about his first match, which was the Triplemania XXVII event produced by the Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide organization.
“It was awesome. Before the match, I had no idea what to expect,” Velasquez said.”I was like ‘this could be really good or this could be really bad.’ It was the first time doing it I was on the big show (the biggest show of the year). I was nervous. I was a little scared. But as soon as I went out there, all that went away. It was fun the whole time I was out there doing it. It was so surreal that we did the whole match and it was faster than I thought it would be. I can’t wait to do it again.”
Velasquez had another match in Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide on Sept. 15 and it looks like he’s now ready for the big show. When asked about his next step in pro wrestling, he did not mention joining the WWE, but was ready to take his skills to new heights.
“I’m not sure which organization, but I do plan on wrestling more,” he said. “I want to build myself into the best wrestler that I can be when I do it. I’m going to keep doing it.”
