(In an alternate universe, Lashley gets the TKO against Chad Griggs, enters the Strikeforce heavyweight tournament, and defeats Fedor Emelianenko by flying armbar in the quarterfinals. Shane Del Rosario still goes on to win the whole thing. / Photo courtesy of Showtime)

We haven’t heard much from Bobby Lashley since he quit on the stool against Chad Griggs at Strikeforce: Houston last August. But a press release sent out this morning by Kansas City-based promotion Titan Fighting Championships has answered an important question — Bobby’s days of real fighting aren’t quite over yet.

Now 5-1 in MMA, Lashley will return to action in the headlining bout of Titan FC 17, which will go down March 25th at the Historic Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. His opponent will be James Jack, a heavyweight out of Missouri who’s either 6-2-1 or 5-4-1, depending on who you ask. In the press release, Titan Fighting CEO Joe Kelly did his best to explain why you should care:

“In the fight game, a fighter is usually viewed as only being good as their last fight. But I don’t think that is a fair way to evaluate a fighter, especially an athletically-gifted heavyweight who is only six fights into his career,” Kelly stated. “Bobby won’t admit it and he refuses to make excuses but the reality is that he was diagnosed with mononucleosis shortly after the fight. [Ed. note: The kissing disease!] Also, if anyone watched Griggs’ fight last weekend against Gian Villante, who was widely considered one of the top prospects in MMA coming into that fight, you can clearly see that Griggs is the real deal. Anyone who is writing Bobby off is making a huge mistake. I believe that Titan Fighting will be the perfect platform for Bobby to prove his critics wrong.”

Titan FC will be broadcast live on HDNet, and will also feature Phil Baroni‘s first post-UFC outing, against 3-2 prospect Nick Nolte. It seems like Titan is carving out a niche for itself as the league where fading MMA stars can go to pick up a rebound win. Although that didn’t really work out so well for Tim Sylvia, now did it.