(Inferior heavyweight contender, or marketing genius?!)
Perhaps we’re in the minority here, but we’re getting pretty God damn sick of mixed martial artists throwing around the word “retirement” like Kim Kardashian throws around the word “marriage.” Because retirement, like marriage, is a sacred institution, and nowadays it seems as if every other fighter is taking a big, steaming turd on what was once holy ground. In the past year alone, both Jamie Varner and more recently B.J. Penn have retired, only to come out of said retirement before anyone could even assess their retirement in the first place. Though the jury is still out on how long Nick Diaz and Jason Miller will be out of action, it’s looking like you can add none other than former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar to the former list, as it has been reported by co-Host of Tough Talk on wrestlingobserver.com, Mike Sawyer, that Lesnar will return to the UFC within the year. He broke the news over his Twitter:
Mike Sawyer ?@TOUGHTALKMMA
Had an interesting conversation with someone VERY close to all the Brock Lesnar stuff. He is fighting THIS YEAR in UFC & not Frank Mir…Mike Sawyer ?@TOUGHTALKMMA
plans change all the time, but the name I was told isn’t Roy.Brian ?@FrontRowBrian
If it’s not Mir fighting Lesnar in UFC later this year as @TOUGHTALKMMA reports, who is it? @roynelsonmma? @stefanstruve? @ShaneCarwin II?Mike Sawyer ?@TOUGHTALKMMA
one of the above.
For those of you with the memory capacity of Sammy Jankis, Lesnar announced his retirement from the sport following his first round TKO loss to Alistair Overeem at UFC 141. UFC 141 was a mere six months ago.
Now, this rumor may not be coming from the most reliable source, but if there is any truth to this, then we gotta ask what the hell DW and company are thinking. Oh wait, they’re thinking that having Lesnar back in the UFC will significantly add to their stacks of cash which already stand higher than Joe Silva on a step ladder.
But Sergio Hernandez of CageSideSeats seems to think that we are all being made fools of, and that the UFC have become nothing than pawns in a possible WWE storyline. He writes:
In his short career, he defeated a Hall of Famer, won the heavyweight championship and became the biggest pay-per-view (PPV) draw in the history of the company.
Four months later, he was back in WWE, F5ing John Cena out of nowhere and kicking off their rivalry which culminated in a terrific match at Extreme Rules.
Following Lesnar’s loss to Cena that night, he attacked WWE COO Triple H. Snapping “The Game’s” arm, he hasn’t been seen since and his old mouthpiece Paul Heyman showed up at one point to announce his client’s resignation and subsequent lawsuit against WWE.
Of course, in the world of professional wrestling, this is all a charade.
So when Lesnar showed up at last night’s UFC 146 event and rumors began swirling the former champion was looking to get his old job back, it get me thinking [sic].
According to Dave Meltzer, Lesnar’s meeting with White did not go well. Perhaps the UFC President felt the biggest star in the sport was genuinely interested in making a comeback only to find out his appearance was all to help legitimize the storyline in which he quit WWE.
Meltzer also mentioned a “game is being played.”
It’s unclear what he means by that. Perhaps the aforementioned theory is true and Lesnar plus Vince McMahon is simply using the UFC.
Or maybe Dana White — who has had meetings with McMahon in the past — is helping an old friend with his new gig?
We gotta say, this theory makes much more sense than the actual possibility of Lesnar returning to the UFC. As Hernandez also mentioned, it’s not like the beatings Lesnar took at the hands of Cain Velasquez and the Ubereem have been long forgotten, so who would honestly expect Lesnar’s return to be anything but a marketing ploy? One thing’s for sure, if he were to return, it surely wouldn’t help add to the legitimacy of a sport that is constantly trying to gain credibility in the mainstream.
But on the outside chance Lesnar actually is returning, Sawyer seems convinced that he will either face Stefan Struve, Roy Nelson, or Shane Carwin. We can go ahead and cross Struve off that list, because he is not nearly well known enough to be facing a guy like Lesnar, even though he has about 5 times the experience. Nelson has been angling for a fight with Lesnar for what seems like an eternity now, even to the point that he would be willing to go to the WWE to “whoop his ass,” so perhaps all of his trash talking could finally pay off. As for Carwin, he and Lesnar already engaged in a classic war at UFC 116, and Carwin finally has a return date tentatively set, so that could make for the most interesting storyline of the three, but what do you think, Potato Nation? Should we even be considering this lunacy as a possibility?