Cain Velasquez vs. Brock Lesnar had its sequel in WWE, and some of the UFC heat followed.
The heat from UFC 121: Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez carried over to the pair’s pro-wrestling match at WWE Crown Jewel.
Lesnar and Velasquez squared off in a WWE ring for the company’s controversial Crown Jewel show in Saudi Arabia on Oct. 31, 2019. Just shy of the event’s two-year anniversary, Velasquez reflected on his WWE interactions with Lesnar. Velasquez (14-3) famously beat Lesnar (5-3, 1 NC) via first-round technical knockout (TKO) to capture the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight title at UFC 121 on Oct. 23, 2010.
“There’s always going to be friction with that,” Velasquez told Ariel Helwani on MMA Fighting’s The MMA Hour. “So yeah, there was, but working together. We didn’t work much, but talking to him just for that little bit, I just know where he comes from, just from that little time spent, and I mean very little. I know what he’s about, and I respect him for that.
“What you see out there when he performs, all that s—t, he lives it, he breathes it. That’s him. That persona that you see, that’s him out there. That’s his true self. Close quarters, he’s obviously more human, but that’s him, and I saw that.”
Velasquez, who impressed fans with his Lucha Libre style in his pro-wrestling debut with Mexican promotion Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide, only ever wrestled that one time for WWE before being released.
“I think they wanted me to stay in that MMA zone,” Velasquez expressed. “They wanted me to have that rivalry with Brock, but they really weren’t willing to put the time in to have us work together to really do that. They wanted us to do that, and well, you know how that is.
“It is what it is, man,” he continued. “That was me just going into it and really just trying to figure out what it was. It was all thrown at me at once, a new organization and I was there for whatever anybody needed, as far as to have me build, or whatever they wanted me to build into. I’m sorry to everyone that got let down. That does hurt me as well, because I expect a lot out of myself. I expect more for myself.”
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