Despite not performing at 100 percent, he was still performing at a high enough level to wear UFC gold.
Brock Lesnar accomplished what very few accomplished in only their 5th professional fight in any combat sport—win a major championship.
The closest that comes to mind was when Leon Spinks, in his 8th professional fight, defeated the great Muhammad Ali for boxing’s heavyweight title.
What makes Lesnar’s accomplishment even more impressive is that he won the title when he was not firing on all cylinders.
After his being diagnosed with diverticulitis following his bout against Frank Mir at UFC 100 for the heavyweight title, the doctors treating Lesnar stated that with his illness, his body was only functioning at around 70 to 80 percent.
That is scary.
If Brock was able to do what he did while only performing at 80 percent of his natural physical ability, can you imagine what he would be capable of at 100 percent?
The only two losses in his career came against Frank Mir and Cain Velasquez.
In his loss to Mir, Lesnar was submitted with a knee bar. This was after he put a beating on Mir. Based on his follow-up performance against Heath Herring, it is safe to assume that he was healthy during that fight.
His loss against Velasquez came with the challenger to his title pounded his way to a TKO victory. The way Velasquez defeated Lesnar was not unlike the way Shane Carwin almost beat him.
The difference in the Velasquez fight was Brock did not display any sort of defense aside from putting his arms in front of his face. In the fight against Carwin, Lesnar did the same thing, only he utilized head movement to make a majority of Carwin’s punches miss their mark.
With this news breaking of his illness, one has to wonder if it had any affect on Lesnar’s performance against Velasquez. Everyone who saw that fight could notice there was something that just wasn’t right about Lesnar that night.
As this story develops, answers to these questions may come to light.