It’s a testament to Brock Lesnar’s greatness that anybody even still wanted the guy.
That’s not an insult; it’s a compliment.
At 37 years old and on the heels of two bouts with a life-threatening disease, most professional athletes would be considered lost property. Lesnar hasn’t fought since 2011, and his last two UFC appearances ended in lopsided TKO losses. His current profile, therefore, doesn’t exactly scream “hot prospect.”
But this guy is special. Always has been.
The latest example of Lesnar’s singular status came on Tuesday, when ESPN invited him on an early-evening episode of SportsCenter to announce that he’s signed a lucrative contract extension with WWE and won’t return to the world of legitimate fighting.
“I’m an older caveman now,” Lesnar told ESPN anchor Michelle Beadle, by way of explanation. “I make wiser caveman decisions. So, I’m here to say my legacy in the Octagon is over.”
This wasn’t necessarily news, per se, but rumors about a possible UFC return had swirled around Lesnar for months.
Because rumors about a return have swirled around Lesnar since he walked away from MMA back in 2011.
Because he’s Brock Lesnar.
No matter what he does (or, in this case, doesn’t do) he’s too big not to make a splash.
Though his announcement was essentially a nonevent—simply confirming no change in his professional status—it still served dual purposes. It put the MMA industry into a tizzy of remembrance on social media while simultaneously giving Sunday night’s WrestleMania 31 pay-per-view a much-needed shot of publicity.
Now that we know once and for all he won’t cross back to our side of the street, UFC fans are left to kick through the rubble of Lesnar’s four-and-a-half-year fight career and puzzle over what might have been. Not necessarily what might’ve happened if he’d come back—we all suspect that wouldn’t have gone well—but what might’ve been if he’d played it differently from the start.
What if Lesnar had transitioned to MMA back in 2000, when he was fresh off his NCAA Division I national wrestling championship at the University of Minnesota? What if he’d been afforded the maturation process of a normal heavyweight fight prospect, instead of jumping straight to the UFC with just one professional bout under his belt?
Could he have been an even more revolutionary force? Or would his shortcomings merely have manifested themselves sooner, preventing him from becoming the pay-per-view sensation he became from 2008-11?
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get answers to these questions.
What we must understand is, even as it stands, Lesnar’s short MMA career was a miraculous success.
He competed in all of eight professional bouts, and he left a fairly middling 5-3 record. Still, even as a complete neophyte, he managed to win the UFC heavyweight title and usher in a period of popularity and financial success that was unprecedented in our little corner of the sports world—and might never be seen again.
He became the dark lord, the guy you loved to hate. He was the swaggering, smirking musclehead who undid every lie that strip mall martial arts instructors had been selling for years. He was the walking, talking personification of a terrible frat-party T-shirt—“Size Matters”—and there was something undeniably glorious about it.
Lesnar did all this with the grappling skills he honed as a college wrestler, his physical strength and otherworldly athleticism, and very little else. The fact that he walked into the Octagon at age 30, with minimal experience, and put the entire sport under his thumb is so impressive it should shake even the deepest, darkest Internet hater to the core.
But could Lesnar have been even better? Now we’ll never know.
The fall, after all, was precipitous.
He beat MMA legend Randy Couture—a glorified light heavyweight, but still—to capture the 265-pound championship at UFC 91, just nine months after arriving in the Octagon. Unfortunately, Lesnar managed just a single title defense against Frank Mir before he was sidelined a first time by diverticulitis. He almost died, we’re told, but fought his way back to defeat Shane Carwin in a squeaker at UFC 116 during the summer of 2010.
(Ed. Note: That event was the fight company’s second-best-selling PPV of all time. The first? UFC 100, which featured Lesnar’s UFC debut, a loss to Mir.)
The Carwin bout was billed as his triumphant return, but it also proved to be a cautionary affair. When Carwin hit Lesnar with a hard uppercut in the early stages of their fight, Lesnar jumped back like a cat doused with cold water, and a bell tolled in the minds of every other UFC heavyweight.
This guy didn’t like to get hit.
It was our first clue that Lesnar wasn’t going to be the dominant smashing machine the UFC promoted him as for very much longer. He won the fight, but his biggest weaknesses had been exposed.
In his next fight at UFC 121, Cain Velasquez stormed through him to take the title via first-round stoppage. Then, in the spring of 2011, Lesnar’s diverticulitis returned. By the time he dealt with it and came back a second time, the blueprint of how to beat him was a matter of public record.
Alistair Overeem followed it to a tee at UFC 141, and when Lesnar retired in the wake of the loss, nobody was that surprised. His stay in the Octagon was like almost every other professional phase in his life—short, but entirely revelatory.
In the end, Lesnar may have come to MMA too late. By the time he arrived in the Octagon in the heart of the sport’s modern era—after collegiate wrestling and professional wrestling and a failed attempt at pro football—the gap in skills between Lesnar and the UFC’s other top heavyweights was too wide for him to close.
So, we are left with more questions: Was it diverticulitis or his own flaws that ultimately knocked “The Beast” off his pedestal?
What if Lesnar had worked harder on his standup game? What if he’d gone outside his comfort zone and joined a top-level MMA camp, instead of establishing his own private DeathClutch Gym at home in Alexandria, Minnesota? What if he’d hooked up with Mike Winkeljohn or Henri Hooft or Duane Ludwig?
These are all questions without answers. They’re questions that Lesnar realized he didn’t really want to try to answer now, as he moves into his own hard-earned middle age.
Considering his enduring standing as a draw however, it’s no surprise that as late as this week, the prospect of acquiring his services was enticing enough to set off a bidding war between two sports and entertainment giants. Just like us, they too wanted to see exactly what he was still capable of.
In any case, Lesnar’s brief reign over the UFC heavyweight division should be remembered as a magical time in our sport.
He came, he saw, he popped PPV sales numbers. He conquered and was conquered. On Tuesday, he likely made the right decision: for his age bracket, for his family, for his skill level.
He did it all his own way, and in so doing left a lot of stones forever unturned.
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