Well that was fun while it lasted.
It was revealed on Thursday that former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar was heavily fined and suspended for a year for his doping violations at UFC 200 in July. Lesnar came out of a self-imposed exile from MMA to take on Mark Hunt at the event, looking better than he had since his title run and pounding the Australian into dust on his way to a decision win.
The suspension marks the end of Lesnar’s surprising 2016 pilgrimage back to the realm of unscripted combat, one that was a shocking as it was rife with controversy.
It started when he went back on his word to never return to MMA and remain a fixture in WWE, where he’s equal parts special attraction and global superstar. With UFC 200 rapidly approaching and many people feeling underwhelmed by a relatively paltry offering for one of the biggest cards in company history, Dana White reached an eleventh-hour deal with Lesnar for a bout at the event.
The signing stunned many, but the exemption from USADA drug testing that the UFC granted Lesnar was almost as unforeseeable as his return to fisticuffs. Somewhere deep in the legalese of the USADA deal, the promotion had a right to exempt athletes who were returning from retirement so that they could catch up on the changes to PED testing that had occurred since they left.
Lesnar was one such retiree, however he repaid the company’s goodwill be being busted for a cocktail of performance enhancers that both USADA and the Nevada Athletic Commission caught in testing—mind you, caught too late to prevent him from fighting Hunt and making everyone a massive windfall of cash in the process.
It infuriated Hunt, who hasn’t fought since and has been vocal with his outrage, and left many questioning how such an exemption could even be operable in the USADA contract. This very week, the UFC refused an exemption for a replacement fighter in fact, so they aren’t particularly liberal in granting them to those who won’t make them a fortune.
But in the wake of all of this, a question emerges: Was Lesnar ever even really back?
For all intents and purposes, it’s hard to say that he was.
He did very little promotion for UFC 200, content to show up at one press conference and a Q&A and drop a few witticisms during fight week.
On fight night he conquered Hunt, but he did it with everything short of rocket fuel in his system. He brazenly claimed that he’d like to fight again in the post-fight presser (which he held on his own, in typical Lesnar fashion), then rode off into the night with a wide grin and a dump truck full of money.
When it was all over and he was busted, he offered a half-hearted claim that he’d get to the bottom of it all but pretty quickly dropped off the face of the MMA earth afterwards until his settlement was announced this week.
He’s back in WWE now, shaking Vince McMahon down for millions instead of Dana White and dramatically jobbing to Bill Goldberg in seconds so as to keep the shakedown alive for the next few months, during what will surely be a program that runs into early spring.
If you stopped someone on the street and asked them who Brock Lesnar is, what do you think they’d say?
Former UFC champion? The main attraction of UFC 200? Suddenly infamous PED cheat? WWE star? All of the above?
Who knows?
But with his return now having proven to be a one-off and with all the conspicuousness that surrounded even that much, it’s hard not to feel like it was the MMA space who was doing the jobbing this past summer. It didn’t even take a spear or a jackhammer, all it took was Lesnar’s sheer force of personality and a little desperation from the sport’s leading promotion.
It’s unfortunate, because the man knows how to create an event like few others in combat sports—real or imagined.
The reality is that this wasn’t a comeback, though. This was a cash grab and we’re all worse off for it.
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