Former UFC middleweight contender Nate Marquardt is reportedly planning a potential comeback, but this time with Bellator.

MMA journalist for theScore James Lynch recently interviewed current UFC middleweight Ian Heinisch, who revealed that he is training with Marquardt as part of his upcoming fight camp for his matchup against Omari Akhmedov at UFC 245. According to Lynch, Heinisch told him that Marquardt is thinking about coming out of retirement and he is interested in signing with Bellator if he indeed makes his return to the cage.

Here’s what Lynch wrote on his Twitter.

https://twitter.com/LynchOnSports/status/1197965565719003142

“Heinisch revealed in the interview that Nate Marquardt has been training with him extensively and is planning a potential comeback, mentioned Bellator as a possible destination. We’ll see if that ends up happening”

Marquardt retired from mixed martial arts in 2017 after losing three straight fights to Cezar Ferreira, Vitor Belfort and Sam Alvey. He retired from MMA with a 35-19-2 record which included notable wins over the likes of Tyron Woodley, Demian Maia, and Yves Edwards. Marquardt is a long-time veteran of the sport who first made his professional MMA debut way back in 1999. He starred for the UFC from 2005 to 2011, and again from 2013 to 2017. In between, he had a stint in Strikeforce and was the promotion’s welterweight champion when he knocked out Woodley with a memorable KO in 2012.

However, Marquardt decided to call it quits after his three-fight losing skid in 2017, and his last win in the cage came way back in October 2016 when he knocked out Tamdan McCrory. Part of the reason Marquardt retired was all the damage he took during his long career, which included a famous beatdown against Kelvin Gastelum in 2015 that saw his trainer Trevor Whittman call a corner stoppage, a rarity in MMA. But now that he’s taken two years off to recover perhaps he’s feeling better, and if so he would immediately become a contender in Bellator’s shallow middleweight division.

Do you think Nate Marquardt will come out of retirement to fight for Bellator?