There is a short list of athletes who can step away from the fight game and instantly become the hottest topic of discussion when there’s a mere mention of them possibly, maybe, perhaps making a return.
Fedor Emelianenko, the great Russian heavyweight. Gina Carano, the first female mixed martial arts star. Those of us involved in the publishing business thank our lucky stars when Scott Coker said on the Sherdog Radio Network’s Beatdown show he’s going to Japan to meet with Emelianenko, or when Carano is suddenly rumored to be the next opponent for Ronda Rousey.
Never mind the fact that they’ve been out of action for years. Forget about the notion that the sport may have passed them by. People still love to talk about them, and any publication that likes money is in the business of giving readers the things they like to talk about.
And then there’s Brock Lesnar. You know the guy. He was the pro wrestler who enraged hardcore MMA fans by having the gumption to jump into mixed martial arts with very little experience (this sounds familiar, does it not?) and then proceeded to anger them even further by winning the UFC heavyweight championship.
Then Cain Velasquez stole his soul, and Alistair Overeem kicked a little dirt him him, sending him scampering back to Vince McMahon, who willingly paid him millions of dollars to show up to work 20 or so times a year.
And now, three years later, the Lesnar train appears ready to roll back into mixed martial arts one more time. According to Dave Meltzer (subscription required), officials at World Wrestling Entertainment are working under the assumption that Lesnar will leave the WWE once his contract expires in April and return to the UFC.
“The Lesnar people always keep things quiet, but within the company, the belief is that he’s going back to UFC,” Meltzer said. “His showing up lighter to TV last week confirmed that to people who thought it.”
And then you have Coker, gleefully back in the promotion game with Bellator, confirming what Viacom executives privately told me in November: Bellator will make a serious run at Lesnar when he becomes a free agent.
“There’s not going to be a fighter on the planet we can’t afford and have access to,” he said. “There hasn’t been any serious dialogue [with Lesnar], but when the time comes to have serious dialogue, we’ll be right there.”
Just like that, Lesnar is the hottest free agent in mixed martial arts, even though he’s not a free agent. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a technicality. The Lesnar news cycle has almost always been built on the potential of what he might do, not what he actually does. It is built on people who don’t care that he lost to Velasquez and Overeem, that he doesn’t respond well to being punched in the face.
These are the same people who could not care less about Phil Brooks having no fighting experience. They’re the masses, not the few, and they are the ones who have been purchasing UFC pay-per-views at a rapidly declining rate over the past few years.
The promotion has to figure out a way to bring them back if they want to turn their ship around. That’s why you’ll see Brooks step in the Octagon next year, and it’s why you’ll see the UFC make a major play to bring Lesnar back.
But unlike the last time the UFC secured Lesnar‘s services, there is competition. Coker is rebuilding Bellator by focusing almost exclusively on reeling in those casual fans. He’ll throw the hardcore fans a bone by booking, say, Melvin Manhoef vs. Joe Schilling. But if he needs to put Tito Ortiz vs. Stephan Bonnar in the main event over a Bellator title fight, well, that’s what he’ll do.
What better way to bring in those casual fans than by signing Lesnar and putting him on free television against, say, Bobby Lashley? Yeah, that would do the trick. Viacom’s stellar advertising sales department will have a field day selling ads against that fight.
Some will say Lesnar only wants to fight the best in the world. Dana White already began repeating this mantra on Off the Record (via MMAFighting.com). It is not a true statement. Lesnar does not care about fighting the best in the world. He cares about making the most money in the world.
If Coker and his Viacom overlords step up to that negotiating table and make Lesnar an offer that’s better than what the UFC makes, you are going to see Lesnar in Bellator. It’s that simple. He cares about the bottom line. Always has, always will.
No matter where Lesnar ends up, it will be a big deal. He’s a big deal right now, dominating news cycles, and he’s still under contract for a few more months. Imagine the din when he’s actually negotiating with the UFC or Bellator? It will be all Lesnar, all the time, until he steps back in the cage for the first time in three years.
And unless his second run at mixed martial arts is a catastrophic failure, Lesnar will be one of the biggest stars in the sport yet again. He’ll help the UFC bring back some of those fans who have been missing in action for the past few years, or he’ll help Bellator gain more eyeballs than many of us ever imagined they would.
But either way, everybody—from Lesnar and the promotion that signs him to the halfwits like me who are lucky enough to cover this sport for a living—wins in the Lesnar business.
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