Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight title holder Robbie Lawler is no longer with American Top Team (ATT). After the initial report from ENT Imports, sources close to the situation confirmed the news to MMAFighting.com‘s Ariel Helwani.
“Ruthless” had a career resurgence with ATT. Lawler has gone 8-2 since returning to the UFC and won championship gold along the way. He was a member of ATT for all of those fights.
Lawler dropped his title to Tyron Woodley at UFC 201 back in July 2016. He was knocked out in the first round. Lawler was set to fight Donald Cerrone at UFC 205 in New York City, but he felt it was too soon to come back from the knockout loss.
ATT welcomed Lawler to training camp back in 2012.
Before returning to the UFC, Lawler went 3-5 in his last eight fights. Despite a unanimous decision loss to Lorenz Larkin in his final Strikeforce bout, “Ruthless” was brought back to the UFC. His first opponent back was Josh Koscheck. Lawler starched Koscheck with a first round knockout.
Lawler eventually fought Rory MacDonald. “Ruthless” was able to pull of an upset win by split decision. He then went on to fight Johny Hendricks twice for the UFC welterweight title. While Lawler was unsuccessful in their first encounter, he captured the belt in the second fight by split decision.
A second fight with “Red King” turned out to be a bloody war. The fight saw a piece of Lawler’s upper lip split and MacDonald’s nose get mangled. In the end, the damage was too much for the challenger and Lawler earned the TKO win in the fifth round.
Lawler followed that performance with a back-and-fourth barn burner against former interim champion Carlos Condit. “Ruthless” dropped Lawler in the fight, but both men swung for the fences until the very end. A strong surge of energy in the final round helped Lawler edge his opponent out for a split decision victory.
