April - 2015
SCRAPP! FIGHT MAGAZINE
8
middle ground. That was only
cemented when he brought a
certain level of theatrics into
the MMA game (such as after
his defeat of Frank Mir at UFC
100, the highest selling PPV in
UFC history). Yet far too many
forget that Brock Lesnar was
a decorated NCAA Champion
who was incredibly adept in
the ring. Look no further than
his famed “Wheel of Death”
maneuver for evidence. In real-
ity, he wasn’t a “fake fighter”
who went legit, he was a legit
amateur wrestler who went
scripted, then real, and in the
end, back to scripted again.
His legacy? A dominant four-
fight win streak in the UFC
heavyweight division, winning
the title and defending it twice
— still tied for the heavyweight
record when it comes to title
defenses, at least for now —
before falling to illness (diver-
ticulitis), losing his belt to Cain
Velasquez, attempting one
last run, losing to an Alistair
Ovreem later suspended for a
failed drug test, and retiring.
With his overall MMA record at
5-3, the second biggest chunk
of Lesnar’s legacy, after his ti-
tle reign, becomes the “what
ifs” — namely, what if he had
debuted in MMA right after
college? What if the scripted
“sports entertainment” world
of the WWE hadn’t gotten in
the way? What if diverticulitis
hadn’t cut his MMA run short?
Love him or hate him, Brock
Lesnar brought more eyeballs
than ever before to MMA, and
his impact can’t be denied.
He’s also making the right
move calling it a career, if his
heart isn’t in it. Does it take
away some dream match-ups
for fans? Sure. Lesnar vs. Mir 3
would have been huge. Lesnar
vs. Overeem 2 could have an-
swered a lot of questions, and
it still boggles the mind that
Overeem’s win in that bout, for
which the Dutch heavyweight
had a conditional fight license
dependent on him passing
multiple drug tests within a
window of several months (ex-
tending past the fight), was al-
lowed to stand, given he even-
tually failed a PED test within
his conditional license window.
Bloody Elbow’s great piece on
that issue can be found here.
Yet keep in mind he only lost to
the best: Frank Mir, in a match
he was winning, Cain Velas-
quez, considered by many to
be the greatest heavyweight
in the sport’s relatively short
history, and Overeem, a multi-
promotion champion.
Dream match-ups aside, how-
ever, what Lesnar also takes
away is the chance that he
might actually tarnish his leg-
acy. A failed second run, and
all of a sudden, the luster is
off his career. All of a sudden,
he’s no longer a bright spot in
the sport’s history who simply
burned out too quickly due
to starting late and struggling
with his health. Suddenly, he’s
a failed experiment in cross-
over promotion (as much as a
former champion could ever be
considered “failed” at least).
In the end, this is more than
likely the best bet for Lesnar,
who relied on dominant wres-
tling and can bee seen as one
of the last champions to really
rely on a single discipline. He
leaves as the most watched fig-
ure in the sport, one who drew
more attention than most ac-
tive fighters in making his final
decision to retire, despite not
having fought for years. Only
the most ardent of nay-sayers
can question his success in the
sport, and though he poses
the most frustrating of “what
if” scenarios, MMA fans, and
all sports fans, ponder these
questions of all great cham-
pions, so in that, Lesnar is far
from alone.
And in the history of the UFC
and MMA, despite an all too
short career, he’s in rare com-
pany.
