After years of speculation, Brock Lesnar finally put MMA fans hoping for his return out of their misery. There will be no second act for Lesnar, at least not in the cage.
Instead, the WWE champion told ESPN’s Jonathan Coachman he was pulling the plug on his MMA career.
“It was a very hard decision at this stage of my career,” Lesnar said. “The fighter inside me wants to compete. The father and husband—I’m an older caveman now. I make wiser caveman decisions. So, I’m here to say my legacy in the Octagon is over.”
With his career officially over, it’s time to turn our attention to his legacy. Bleacher Report lead writers Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter, MMA’s version of Starsky and Hutch, tackle the only question that matters in the wake of this stunning announcement—how will MMA fans remember Brock Lesnar?
Jeremy: So, Jonathan, Brock Lesnar decided to pull the plug on a return to mixed martial arts, announcing he’d signed a new deal with the WWE on SportsCenter (of all places) today. Which is kind of sad, in my opinion, because covering Lesnar fights was a whole lot of fun and I was kinda looking forward to doing it again.
But those days are gone. And now that he’s finally, officially not returning to the Octagon, we can safely look back and figure out what his legacy was, and how he’ll be remembered in the fighting world. The popular Internet opinion seems to be that he was never any good, was handed a title shot because of his popularity and only won fights because he was much bigger than the guys he fought.
But is that true? I don’t think it is. Not entirely, anyway. But I’d like to know what you think.
Jonathan: Popular Internet opinion is, invariably, wrong. Always and forever.
There have been a lot of gargantuas in the UFC Octagon, literally from the very first bout in the sport’s history. In that fight Gerard Gordeau proved bigger wasn’t necessarily better by sending poor Teila Tuli’s tooth flying across the arena—and great fighters have been repeating that lesson over and over again for 21 years.
No, it wasn’t Lesnar’s size that made him a UFC champion. After all, Randy Couture had beaten bigger before falling victim to what he called Lesnar’s “hamhocks.” Instead it was a rare athleticism, combined with rare wrestling chops, that made Lesnar such a standout.
Size, of course, was part of it. But it was the way Brock moved at 265 pounds that made him special. No heavyweight in MMA had ever been that fast, that strong and that skilled. Some had combined two of those attributes into a championship package—but never all three. Not until Lesnar.
When he was at the top of his game, before diverticulitis and the beginning of the fall, we had the pleasure of watching something we may never see again. Brock Lesnar wasn’t just good. At his best, he inspired awe. That, Jeremy, is a powerful feeling.
Jeremy: I’ll never forget that first fight with Frank Mir. Yeah, Lesnar lost that one in the end, which actually ended up being for the best because it gave Mir ammunition and led to the biggest PPV fight in UFC history.
But the thing I’ll never forget is that moment when Lesnar got Mir on the ground, then pounced on him. Mir started rolling. And in a flash, Lesnar spun around on top of him, keeping dominant position. I watched that one moment on replay at least 100 times that week. I’d never seen such a big man move so very fast. It was breathtaking.
And you’re right about about Brock’s size alone not being the thing that helped him win. That’s just an excuse people use because they don’t like him, or they don’t like that he was a fake rassler invading their precious, pure sport. The reality is that Brock came into a sport and very quickly became adept at it. I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like if he were graduating college in 2009, going straight into mixed martial arts. I think we’d be looking at an all-time legacy heavyweight.
Jonathan: No one talks about that first Mir fight as a positive these days, but at the time it was a revelation. Every fighter I talked to for months wanted to discuss Lesnar. Because, even though he lost, it was obvious right away that he was a different kind of beast.
Brock had a sheer animal instinct that is a rare gift. His body just reacts, a split second before an ordinary man’s would.
You could see it in college, when he literally cartwheeled his way out of trouble before pinning the University of Pennsylvania’s Bandele Adeniyi-Bada in the 2000 NCAA wrestling tournament. A similar athleticism was on display as he charged across the cage after knocking Heath Herring silly in just his second fight in the UFC.
In 20 years, when people write about Lesnar’s place in UFC history, these small moments will be forgotten. Instead, he’ll be reduced to a line on a ledger sheet, a financial story instead of an athletic one. And that’s only part of his story.
Jeremy: You’re right. Lesnar’s legacy as a draw will be what people remember the most. His athleticism and accomplishments have mostly been whitewashed already, anyway, in favor of “he doesn’t like getting punched,” as though not enjoying being punched by Cain Velasquez is something unique to him.
He was a financial wonder for the UFC, bringing in millions of new fans who have since disappeared because there is nobody else like him on the UFC roster. Conor McGregor is something like a Brock Lesnar, and he very well may be the UFC’s biggest star by the end of this year. But he weighs 145 pounds. Brock Lesnar was a giant of a man with charisma and speed and an intensity unmatched by anyone else I’ve ever seen. He was a man who learned a difficult sport fairly quickly. He wasn’t an expert, but he picked things up remarkably fast.
What I’ll remember about Lesnar is that an illness prevented him from being what he truly should have been, and I hate that. I hate it.
Jonathan: Diverticulitis is the great unknown. You can’t discuss Lesnar without it, but you also can’t pinpoint for certain whether it’s the primary culprit for his fall from grace.
I agree that no one likes to get punched. But you can’t deny Lesnar’s adverse reaction to fists flying his way was straight up comical. Meme-worthy even. How much of that was a result of his injuries and difficulty training? Or how much was simply a man not quite being 100 percent suited for his chosen sport?
Either way, it lends an air of mystery to Lesnar. No one can truly say how amazing his career might have been if not for his health problems. Would he have been the best to ever step into the cage? Or had he peaked already, the rest of his fighting life destined to disappoint?
We can’t answer those questions definitively. That’s why we’ll be arguing about Brock Lesnar and his legacy for a long time. And that’s OK—that’s what fans do with the great ones.
Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter cover combat sports for Bleacher Report
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