Brock Lesnar deserves credit from UFC fans and peers alike after stepping inside the ring with powerful striker Alistair Overeem at UFC 141.
Lesnar took a beating. He was pronounced the loser just over two minutes into the main event in Las Vegas Friday night.
The fact that he took the whipping like a man and a professional—after recovering from a crippling intestinal disease for the second time in as many years—is truly astonishing.
Lesnar has struggled with diverticulitis for some time now. He had to have a foot of his colon removed because of the condition. Asking a heavyweight brawler to step inside the ring with another 265-pounder after such a dramatic procedure is, without question, asking too much.
Some will argue that Lesnar failed to show up to the fight. I said as much upon watching two and half minutes of the former UFC heavyweight champion backpedaling into the cage and looking like a deer in headlights.
The reality is that these were no ordinary circumstances for the 34-year-old.
In fact they were far from ordinary. There is arguably no more feared striker in MMA today than Overeem. Lesnar stood up to him, despite having physical shortcomings from his medical condition and the fact that he has never been a fighter as much as he was a wrestler.
Lesnar was fighting an uphill battle the second he agreed to take on Overeem. His previous fight was an embarrassing first-round defeat to Cain Velasquez. A second loss to a heavyweight newcomer was all but guaranteed to make Lesnar irrelevant.
His sudden retirement following the loss was inevitable. The cards have been stacked against Lesnar’s MMA career, so it has ended early and quietly.
Lesnar never ducked a fight though. He took on the sport’s best and wasn’t afraid of getting beat, even if he did look scared at times inside the Octagon.
For that simple fact Lesnar should be applauded—both by those who have watched and those who have seen first-hand what he is capable of.
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