Fighting for the first time in 18 months felt a little strange for War Machine . The result felt pretty good, though. It took War Machine (13-4 MMA, 1-0 BFC) just under four minutes to stop Blas Avena (8-7 MMA, 1-1 BFC) on Wednesday night at Bellator 96 in his first fight since November 2011. Since November 2011, War Machine re-signed with Bellator (after a stint in 2009 that never came to be when he was released before the promotion’s first event after a MySpace rant about President Obama), gone back to jail, got out of jail, got a shot in a Bellator welterweight tournament, lost that shot when he tore his ACL training, healed up and now, finally, he’s back. War Machine said getting back in the cage after a long layoff didn’t necessarily have ring rust behind it, but there was something he wasn’t expecting. “That’s the thing with ring rust: It doesn’t exist that much,” War Machine told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “You fight like 40 fights in the gym before you ever come to the real fight. But I won’t lie, I was a little more nervous than usual.