(Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Buddy movie! PicProps: SportsAgentBlog)
A whole new year, a whole new Brockwatch. After spending part of 2009-10 waiting with bated breath to see if Brock Lesnar’s body would eat itself from the inside out, it now appears that we’ll at least begin 2011 wondering aloud if the notoriously fickle slab of beef will ever fight in the UFC again. Initial reports do not look good. Company President Dana White all but admitted he had no idea what was going on with Brock a couple weeks back and the latest news from wrestling guru Dave Meltzer indicates that Lesnar hasn’t been returning the boss’ phone calls and maybe hasn’t trained a single day since that soul-crushing beatdown by Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 brought “Brocktober” to a screeching halt a week early.
The smug indignation is thick in the air of the blogodome right now, friends. Frankly, it seems like the MMA world can’t fucking wait to stick a fork in the moldering corpse of Lesnar’s legitimate fighting career and declare him the most overhyped, overly-muscled windbag since, well, Kimbo Slice. Clearly, we are all taking unseemly, but totally understandable glee in the idea that he might turn tail and slink back to professional wrestling after getting his ass handed to him by Velasquez. C’mon though, obviously nobody (except maybe Sable) likes Brock Lesnar, but the sober realist in us has to ask: Aren’t we getting a little bit ahead of ourselves here?
If it is in fact true that Lesnar isn’t taking Big DW’s calls and that he hasn't rounded up the boys for a group backslapping sesh down at the DeathClutch gym, doesn’t that just mean Lesnar is doing exactly what he said he was going to do win, lose or draw after the Velasquez fight? That being, take a bunch of time off to kill shit in the Minnesota hills and assumedly spend some time with his former prowrestler wife and future prowrestler baby. Shouldn’t we wait for this whole scenario to play out before we totally bury the guy?
Truth is, we can’t, because we’re all so fascinated by everything this man – this enormous jackass, both literally and figuratively – does or does not do. And really, doesn’t that say more about us and our status as unrepentant fanboys than it does about Brock Lesnar?
Word is Lesnar isn’t terribly interested in accepting anything resembling a challenge in his “comeback” fight after getting undressed by Velasquez. That includes a rematch with Shane Carwin and – coupled with the rumors about his lack of training – has led to some speculation that his heart is no longer in this fighting thing and/or that he’s looking for an “exit strategy” from the UFC. Of course, there are also reports that he is on the verge of signing on to coach “TUF 13” opposite Frank Mir, that he would very much like to make a couple million dollars play fighting with The Undertaker at next year’s Wrestlemania and that he plans to take gimme fights in the last two bouts of his UFC deal in order to drive up his asking price during a potential dip into free agency.
So, what we’re saying is, like Dana (pending his “special announcement” at the UFC 125 press conference, which could well be Lesnar-to-TUF related) we really have no clue what’s going on in that massive, thick-as-a-brick cranium right now. Like we’ve said from the beginning, one of the biggest limiting factors to Brock Lesnar’s success as an MMA fighter has always been Brock Lesnar himself. At this stage in the game he’s a 280-pound, 33-year-old who has never in his life been able to hold down a job for more than a few years at a time. It wouldn’t be surprising at all if he decided to break camp and find a slightly different vocation at the first sign of adversity in his current one. Did we mention he almost died last year? That also has a way of changing a guy’s priorities.
Also though, maybe we all ought to wait until we have some actual information before we go roasting our hot dogs on the flames of what’s left of the big fella’s career.
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