I have a confession to make...I used to be quite the WWF/WWE wrestling fan back in the day. One of my favorite wrestlers was Brock Lesnar, not only because he was a successful athlete in the real world of sports prior to becoming a wrestler, but also because he didn't seem to let all the hype get to his head and make him forget who he was. Sure, he played along with the fake WWE scripts and ultimately ended up marrying one of the WWE divas in his real personal life, but he still always seemed to me a physically imposing small town guy who did TV wrestling to make some cash. As it turns out, that's exactly what he was. At the top of his game in the WWE, he could have been the champion on and off for the next two decades and possibly been the biggest star fake wrestling had ever seen. Then he took a look around at guys like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and the other icons of the sport who spent their lives on the road 300 days a year, with their bodies breaking down and their family lives in shambles. Sadly, they can't quit, because, Hulk Hogan's occasional business success notwithstanding, guys like them don't know anything else to do. So Brock pulled a Barry Sanders and walked away from the WWE at the top of his game.
After an unsuccessful tryout with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings, he was turned on to MMA, and instantly fell in love with it. After easily dispatching a tomato can MMA fighter from South Korea in just over a minute in his MMA debut, he signed on with the UFC. For his first fight, they matched him up with former heavyweight champion Frank Mir, whose career and life were nearly ended by a terrible motorcycle accident. This is the first time in longer than I can remember that I have been excited to see a fight, and even though it only lasted about a minute and a half, this one did not disappoint. Brock came right out at the bell, started throwing bombs, took Mir down, and basically threw him around like a rag doll. Unfortunately, after being deducted a point for an inadvertent blow to the back of the head, Mir was able to clear his head. Lesnar took Mir down again, but this time, he made the rookie mistake of leaving a leg dangling for a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. One knee bar later, Lesnar tapped out, and the fight was over. To his credit, Lesnar made no excuses, gave credit to Mir as the better fighter that night, and said he would be back. The consensus in the fight game is that Brock Lesnar served notice that he's in the UFC to stay. I, for one, can't wait to watch him grow and improve in the sport. And if the UFC has any sense at all, they will get him back on a fight card ASAP. If they are really smart, they won't feed him hapless tomato cans to build his record, but they'll give him some good second-tier (just below championship level) competition to build his experience. At 30, he's still very young, and in a division of the UFC that is sorely lacking in talent and charisma, he is a welcome addition to the heavyweight division of the UFC.
