When it was announced back in May that Brock Lesnar was pulling out of UFC 131 thanks to another flare-up of diverticulitis, there were many who questioned whether or not Lesnar’s MMA career was over for good.
And it was a legit concern. Diverticulitis, a painful condition in which pouches form in the wall of one’s colon, had already forced Lesnar to walk away from the sport for an extended period of time back in 2009-2010. He was able to come back from it once, but it was hard to see him coming back from it twice—shows how much we know.
As The Los Angeles Times first reported on Tuesday, Lesnar is going to be back in the Octagon at UFC 141 on December 30, where he will fight Alistair Overeem for a shot at the UFC Heavyweight Championship.
That this is going to be Overeem’s UFC debut is a big story, but the bigger story is Lesnar. I don’t think anybody expected him to be ready to fight again by the end of the year, and you get the feeling that a lot of people still don’t believe that he is.
There’s a good reason for that. It would be one thing if Lesnar’s latest (and hopefully last) tangle with diverticulitis needed just rest and medication to overcome. But he had to have what sounds like pretty significant surgery to deal with the problem.
As ESPN’s Frank McNeil reported back in late May, Lesnar had to have a 12-inch section of his colon removed. After the operation was complete, UFC president Dana White said they were “hoping” that Lesnar would be ready to return by the first of the year.
So either Lesnar is way ahead of schedule, or he’s kidding himself into thinking that he might be ahead of schedule.
Because his bout with Overeem is still well over three months away, the latter possibility actually strikes me as the more probable possibility. We don’t really know where Lesnar is in his training, but it stands to reason he’s not into the heavy stuff yet. When he gets to that point, maybe then he’ll realize that his mind is writing checks that his body can’t cash.
That would not surprise me. Lesnar does have a certain bravado about him, and that’s just the kind of thing that would lead him to schedule a fight before he was expected to be ready for one. If he can come back and fight well, he will cement himself as the ultimate badass.
If Lesnar doesn’t fight well, on the other hand, every MMA fan in the world is going to delight in telling Lesnar, “I told you so.”
Apparently, that’s a risk Lesnar is willing to take. That too, is not surprising.
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