Royce Gracie has experience in single-night tournaments. And Scott Coker has experience getting fighters to come back after long layoffs.

Does that mean Gracie (14-2-3) might consider a return to fighting if the Bellator president asked him to join the promotion? After all, Ken Shamrock came back and fought Kimbo Slice recently.

“Ken Shamrock is still in shape – for an old man,” Gracie recently told MMAjunkie. “You can never say never in this business. It’s Scott Coker running the show, bringing the old guys back. He talked to me a couple times. I said, ‘Man, leave me alone.’ He said, ‘I’m going to get you back in the cage.'”

But who would Gracie want to fight if he did come back?

“When you’re on the top, you don’t choose,” he said. “You get chosen. (Coker) asked. I said, ‘You never choose your opponents. Let them choose. Let them come to me.'”

Gracie hasn’t fought since June 2007. But while he was in the UFC, during the promotion’s first five events, he fought in three single-night tournaments – winning all three.

This week, Bellator gets into the one-night tournament fold with a four-man light heavyweight tourney at Bellator 142 in San Jose, Calif. Gracie said fighting in a one-night tournament means a different approach is needed than knowing you have one fight.

“There’s a lot of strategy involved,” he said. “You’ve got to know your opponent. It’s a whole setup. You’ve got to take your opponent out of his game. Having to fight two fights in one night, it’s a total different strategy now. You’ve got to go hard, but you can’t hurt yourself. You’ve got, what, maybe 20 minutes? Then you have to go back and fight again.”

Gracie said he hopes to see the one-night tournament format make a resurgence.

“I hope (we’ll see it more),” he said. “Maybe not every event, but once a year, twice a year, get the best four guys in that division and see who’s the best for that night. A championship belt, there’s the champion and then there’s the guys who have to climb up the ladder. But get the best four guys in one night, and anything can happen.”

For more on Bellator 142, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.