Nick Saban recalls trying to recruit now WWE Superstar Oba Femi to play football

Jun 8, 2022; Eugene, OR, USA; Isaac Odugbesan of Alabama places third in the shot put at 67-2 1/4 (20.48m)during the NCAA Track and Field championships at Hayward Field. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

For years, Alabama football has been one of the best programs when it comes to recruiting, bringing in top talent and developing them into future NFL draft picks. Still, from 2019-22, there was a freak athlete roaming The University of Alabama campus that even Nick Saban himself failed to recruit to play football, and that man is making his WrestleMania debut this Sunday.

Three-time SEC shot put champion and Alabama alum Isaac Odugbesan, known as Oba Femi in WWE, is one of the fastest-rising stars in professional wrestling, and his display of power and strength in the Alabama weight room and in shot put grabbed the attention of Saban and his staff.

Femi broke the Alabama school record in shot put, and in the weight room, he had a 500-pound bench press and a 775 traditional back squat.

As the head coach of Alabama football, Saban landed dozens and dozens of top recruits that went on to have sensational careers like Julio Jones, Derrick Henry and more, but Saban can now say he failed to recruit a future WrestleMania headliner.

“This is just a part of my legacy of all the great recruits that I didn’t recruit,” Saban said with a grin. “Someone this strong, this powerful, this explosive, this athletic that was right on our campus and we missed him; this shows you what a great coach I was.”

Femi explained what it was like being recruited by Saban and his staff and why he turned them down.

“They were like, ‘Oh, who is this guy?'” Femi said. “‘This specimen, freak.’ And you know, they definitely wanted a piece of me, but it could never materialize because I was in love with the shot put.”

Alabama shot put coach Derek Yush confirmed that the football coaches were drooling at the possibility of getting the track and field star to switch to football, but Yush said that Femi’s love of shot put and professional wrestling trumped an offer to play football for Saban at Alabama.

WWE was a huge part of Femi’s life as a kid growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, but little did he know that shot put was going to be the thing that led him to becoming a WWE Superstar.

When his time in college wrapped up, the track and field star opened the next chapter in his story as he stepped foot into a WWE ring and became The Ruler. Femi trained at the WWE Performance Center for a couple months before appearing on WWE NXT, the development show of the company. He went on to win the WWE NXT North American Championship after winning the NXT Men’s Breakout Tournament, and he captured the NXT Championship twice in his tenure down in NXT.

Femi was called up to the main roster of WWE in 2026, and he’s appeared both on Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown. He’s crushed every opponent he’s had thus far, but at WrestleMania 42, he has one of the greatest combat athletes of all time standing across from him.

This Sunday, Femi will kick off Night 2 of WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas and collide with former UFC Heavyweight Champion and multi-time WWE Champion Brock Lesnar. The match will be on ESPN as well as the ESPN app.