The majority of MMA fans weren’t surprised when Brock Lesnar signed with the WWE last week.
Lesnar’s return may have happened a bit faster than most anticipated, but it seemed it was inevitable and most took it in stride and even tuned in to watch him send the live crowd into a frenzy last Monday on Raw.
While Lesnar and the WWE made headline news last Monday night, the UFC had a bombshell dropped on them Wednesday, as heavyweight title challenger Alistair Overeem was busted for failing a pre-fight drug test by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
While Overeem isn’t officially out of the UFC 146 main event, it is extremely unlikely that he will be cleared to compete on May 25th and the UFC now is being forced to try to find a replacement for an event that’s not even two months away.
The replacement that seemed most logical, Frank Mir, has already seemingly been ruled out by UFC president Dana White, who said that the fight between Mir and Cain Velasquez would go on as planned as the co-main event of the 146 card.
With both Mir and Velasquez locked into a bout, the UFC is left with an extremely thin roster of heavyweights that could step in and take on Dos Santos.
Fans have started to rally behind streaking K1 and Pride veteran Mark Hunt, saying his three-fight win streak should be enough to push him into the title fight, but in all honestly he should have to win another fight or two before getting anywhere near a title fight.
Other options include Dan Henderson, a light heavyweight who has even made the cut to middleweight for portions of his career, or Fedor Emelianenko, a guy not even under UFC contract at the moment.
Simply put, the UFC’s heavyweight division needs some firepower, and oddly enough the man that they could use most just returned to television with another company.
Lesnar was the most popular fighter in MMA the second he stepped inside a cage, and with the UFC’s heavyweight super card in shambles they could use him now more than ever.
If Lesnar had stuck around, they may have been able to throw him into the main event or used him to replace Mir and fight Velasquez in a rematch that he’s wanted for quite some time. But without him the division just feels like it falls flat.
Dos Santos, Overeem, Mir and Velasquez are the only truly elite fighters in the UFC’s heavyweight division right now. And while help is on the way with Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett moving over after their Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix final, the fact that the UFC is seemingly left without any viable options for Dos Santos is troubling.
It’s not Lesnar’s fault that the UFC’s most popular division has taken a hit just months after he decided to hang up his gloves, and the UFC had to have known that they wouldn’t be able to ride his popularity for too much longer. But ultimately Lesnar’s return to the WWE came at the worst possible time for the UFC.
Lesnar was one of the few guys on the UFC roster that was famous enough that they could promote an event on his name alone, and seeing him aligned with another company, despite the fact that he was always known more as a wrestler than a fighter, still makes the UFC look like it lost one of it’s biggest stars to a company that they compete with for PPV buys and fans.
The loss of a high-profile title fight and seeing Lesnar reemerge as a star in the WWE proves what we knew all along, that the UFC needed Brock Lesnar far more than Brock Lesnar needed the UFC.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com