Filed under: UFC
LOS ANGELES – For most of Wednesday afternoon’s UFC 121 pre-fight press conference, it was a kinder, gentler Brock Lesnar sitting in the champion’s chair. He smiled. He cracked jokes. He even answered questions about his new beard, and there were plenty of them.
“I finally hit puberty and I just wanted to try it,” Lesnar joked, to the delight of the fans in attendance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. “No, It’s wintertime, I’m going hunting, and I’m from Minnesota. It’s that time of year. We just grow beards.”
See that? No more of the gruff goliath who, at some points in the past, treated media responsibilities as if they were the worst kind of torture. This time when he encountered a question he didn’t like, such as when MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani asked if he enjoyed filming the “UFC Primetime” series that brought a film crew into his gym and dangerously close to the boundaries of his closely guarded personal life, it was as if you could almost see Lesnar suppressing his natural urges.