“The flipping off of the fans that just lined your pocket with millions of dollars is just lame,” Carwin said. “He may be a champion, but he has a long ways to go before he earns the respect of a champion. The fans are why we do this, Brock. This sport is not about fat paychecks and drama. It is about hard work and sacrifice for a shot to do what you did [that] night. It doesn’t matter how much money you make if you can’t earn your peers’ respect and the respect and love of the greatest sporting fans in the world.”
Carwin would have to wait nearly a year to get his hands on Lesnar, as the champion found himself ill. Initially diagnosed with mononucleosis, Lesnar figured he was in the clear after taking it easy for several weeks. He missed his scheduled fight with Shane Carwin at UFC 106, but hoped to relax a little with a hunting trip into the Candadian wilderness, and then return to training. It was in Canada that things took a turn for the worse. He woke up in a sweat with a fever of 104 degrees and a stabbing pain in his gut.
“I didn’t know where I was and realized I had to seek medical help,” Lesnar said. “I’m out in the boondocks. It was about two and a half, three hours from what I thought would be a good medical facility.”
Unable to find the medical care he needed in the Canadian woods, Lesnar’s wife, Rena, drove like a bat out of hell to get him back to the States, to North Dakota where the champion spent 11 days eating from a tube and losing almost 50 pounds. Things started to look desperate. Facing a potentially career-ending surgery to combat diverticulitis, a digestive disease, Lesnar prayed for a cure. Luckily for the UFC champion, and Dana White, who had gotten used to collecting multi-million dollar checks every time Lesnar fought, there was a cure within. When Lesnar returned to the doctor to check on his progress and decide whether or not to have a surgery that could end his career, he found his miracle.
“They found absolutely nothing,” Lesnar said. “The doctors came in and their whole panel at the Mayo Clinic just said, ‘You just got a winning lottery ticket. We don’t need to do surgery on you.’”
The culprit, it turns out, was a diet heavy on meat and potatoes and light on anything green. Within weeks Lesnar, a self-described carnivore, had a new diet and a new outlook on life. “When you think you’re doing all of the right things and all of a sudden something like this happens, obviously you’re not. I had to make some changes,” Lesnar said in January 2010. “I’m getting ready for anybody and everybody. I know the heavyweight division is definitely back on its toes again because Brock Lesnar is back.”
Black Lesnar
While Lesnar prepared for his return, others tried to follow in his very large footsteps. Fellow WWE superstar Bobby Lashley came from a similar background, starting his wrestling career as an amateur star, even making a run at the Olympic Games in 2004 before injuries to his leg stopped him in his tracks. Like Lesnar and Kurt Angle, Lashley was discovered by WWE executives when they saw him at an amateur meet. Like Lesnar, he had the look of a star.
“Kurt Angle was in the WWE at the time and he came to Colorado Springs to the Olympic Training Center,” Lashley remembered, “He was doing a little vignette, a promo, and they were talking about his amateur days. That was the first time I met Kurt. And Kurt said, ‘Have you thought about it? You have a great look for the WWE.’ At the time I was still wrestling, but I had watched it as a kid. I enjoyed it, but I had never seen myself doing it. We exchanged numbers and talked from time to time. Then I got a call from [WWE Executive] Gerald Brisco because they were discussing me again. This time when they said, ‘Come out and we’ll have a look at you,’ and I did.”
Lashley, who wrestled in college at just 177 pounds and in the Army at 211 pounds, was soon up towards 275 pounds of pure ripped muscle. It was no surprise to long-time WWE fans when Lashley, despite a lack of experience and “it” factor, got a serious push. He had the look that Vince McMahon loved and was given every opportunity to succeed. Lashley even main-evented WrestleMania 23, beating Umaga in a hair versus hair match that allowed Donald Trump to shave McMahon’s head.
“It’s no secret Vince has this mindset that you have to be a big, juiced up steroid monster if you wanted to get pushed,” former WWE writer Dominick Pagliaro said in Ring of Hell. “It was strongly implied. You were either on it or you weren’t a star.”
The similar background and newly muscle-bound physique earned Lashley the sobriquet “Black Lesnar,” but he never quite lived up to those high standards. Lashley had all the tools, but was missing that certain something that makes a wrestler a star instead of just another jobber. He worked and worked, but the fans never embraced him. Neither did some members of the locker room who resented Lashley’s fast rise to fame. For his part, Lashley was enjoying the ride.
BOBBY LASHLEY
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“It was probably the most fun I’ve had in my whole life,” Lashley said. “Professional wrestlers aren’t actors, so we can’t really play a character. Very, very few are good enough actors to play a character. Vince would say, ‘We just want you to be yourself, but with the volume turned up. Think about who you are, and then turn the volume up.’ It was actually a fun transition, because you get to find out who you are.”
After four years of the WWE grind, Lashley was wearing down: “At first you’re in your honeymoon period. You don’t realize the toll you are putting on your body because you are just so happy to be there and are having so much fun. But as the years go on, man. We’re doing four shows a week. That’s every week, because there is no down time. Your body is going to suffer because of it, but when it breaks down you can’t quit. Because the show must go on.”
It wasn’t just the grueling road schedule or constant wear on his body. Locker room politics were also a drain on his mental reserves. WWE booker Michael Hayes, a former wrestler who used to come to the ring draped in the Confederate flag, was fired for directing racial slurs at black wrestler Mark Henry. Sources say he had run-ins with Lashley as well. A combination of the mental and physical stress made Lashley say goodbye to WWE.
He once again followed the path laid out by Lesnar, joining the MMA world and looking for his shot at either the UFC or a big money match in Strikeforce. He started training out of his adopted Colorado home, working with established UFC stars like Carwin and Nate Marquardt. Marquardt, not impressed with Lashley’s dedication to the team, sent him packing and he landed in Florida, working out part time with American Top Team while continuing his wrestling career with Total Nonstop Action, a promotion that held weekly shows in the Sunshine State.
Lashley fought four times in the first six months of his career, the most significant bout a win over Bob Sapp in Biloxi, Mississippi. The competition was nothing to write home about; despite winning four of his first five by TKO or submission in the first round, Lashley seemed to be constantly disappointing MMA fans. Like Lesnar, he came with the taint of pro wrestling. Unlike the UFC star, he didn’t challenge himself against the best or earn fans’ respect. Explains BloodyElbow.com,
In a lot of ways Bobby Lashley owes his career to Brock Lesnar. . . .
That’s both a good and a bad thing. Lesnar has paved the way, but he’s also created enormous expectations. Unrealistic expectations. Few will ever be able to match Brock’s rocket like rise to the top of the MMA business. He fought former champion Frank Mir in his second fight. By his fourth fight he was vanquishing the legendary Randy Couture. Lashley couldn’t match that. No one could.
“It’s hard when you have your first fight. And that first fight is on TV,” Lashley told Bloody Elbow Radio in an exclusive interview. “You have a lot of publicity around you. It’s kind of hard. Other guys, they get a handful of fights before they ever see any competition or are even on TV or anything like that. My first fight was on a major card and I’ve been on TV my whole career. Everybody was like, ‘Who are you going to fight next? Are you going to fight Fedor [Emelianenko, a MMA legend]?’
And man, I’ve only got one fight under my belt!”
Fans wanted to see Lashley in with the best heavyweights in the sport. He wanted to build slowly. The reality is most fighters aren’t Lesnar. They can’t jump immediately into the deep end and swim with the sharks. Lashley was criticized for taking a bout with part-time fighter Chad Griggs, a firefighter who was moonlighting as a professional. It turns out, it was a fight at exactly the right level for a prospect like Lashley with lots of flaws. Griggs stopped him in the first round, a loss Lashley blames on illness.
“I’m not giving up. I know what I’m capable of. . . . There’s going to be a lot less pressure. Because I’m not undefeated anymore,” Lashley said. “That’s going to alleviate a lot of pressure for me. I don’t have to worry about keeping this undefeated streak or anything like that. I can just go out there and be more comfortable. I think you’re going to see a much better fighter, because I think they’re going to let me fight every couple of months. I’m just going to get better and better and better.”
The New Brock
While Lashley faded from the sport, only fighting once in the year after the Griggs loss, Lesnar made a triumphant return to face Carwin at UFC 116 on July 3, 2010. Off for almost an entire year, Lesnar carried more than his title belt into the cage. He carried a year’s worth of anxiety and worry, all the questions about his future, and a burning desire to be the best.
It was an epic fight that saw Lesnar put to the mental test for the first time in his MMA career. Lesnar admits to being nervous of Carwin’s heavy hands, and reacted poorly when he was hit hard for the first time, stunned by a left uppercut. Backed into the cage, Lesnar meekly covered up as Carwin knocked him to the ground. Lesnar would later compare Carwin’s assault to Hurricane Katrina, and the fight looked like it would be stopped as Carwin landed blow after blow to Lesnar’s head and arms. But Brock never gave up: “With every punch he threw, I could tell Carwin was shooting his wad. Each punch was a little lighter than the previous one. . . . I just wanted to survive that first round. It would sum up what I had been through the past eight months. I’d be able to regroup, but it would destroy Shane’s confidence. He hit me with everything he had and couldn’t put me away.”
Referee Josh Rosenthal had told both fighters he would give them plenty of leeway since it was a title fight. He was true to his word. Many fights have been stopped for much less, but to Rosenthal’s credit, Lesnar had continued to defend himself throughout and the ref let the fight go on. In the second round an exhausted Carwin was like a spectator at his own execution. Lesnar took him down with ease, submitting him with an arm triangle. Just like that Brock had done what had looked like an impossible task just a few minutes earlier. He had not only survived, he had beaten Shane Carwin.
“[It] nearly gave me a heart attack,” White said. “I went to the back. I walked right out of the Octagon into my back room back there and sat down. I thought they were going to have to bring a defibrillator back there. Seriously, that’s how messed up I was after the show. I was blown away. I needed a nap.”
Up next for Lesnar was Cain Velasquez, a Mexican American heavyweight who had become legendary in MMA circles for his work ethic and potential before he ever set foot in the Octagon. It got so bad that Velasquez’s management wasn’t able to bring him along slowly in the sport’s minor leagues the way they had intended. Cain’s reputation had grown so quickly that no one would fight him. Manager and trainer Bob Cook had to take him right to the UFC after just two fights.
“Ideally you want guys to have a lot more fights than that before they go, but I struggled to get him fights on the smaller shows,” Cook said. “We were really struggling to get him in the cage. I had four shows booked and not one fight came out of those shows. We went through seven or eight opponents in that process. Because they know he comes from a wrestling background and they know he’s working at AKA on his standup and the rest of his game. They would Google him, see the wrestling, and take a look at him, and he’s pretty intimidating looking. So they decided not to fight him.”
“That time was tough,” Velasquez said. “There were probably eight weeks straight where we went to fights and they’d say they’d have somebody for me. Then right before the weigh-ins the fight would get called off or we’d hear the show wasn’t going to happen. That time was tough. We just decided to get a training session with Dana so he could see what I had to offer. And he signed me right away.”
Velasquez earned his shot at Brock with a first round knockout of Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira in February 2010. Cain had stopped all but one of his six UFC opponents, quickly mastering the striking part of the fight game to compliment his All-American level wrestling. But Lesnar had two secret weapons in his training camp — coach Marty Morgan and teammate Cole Konrad. Morgan had coached Konrad to a series of wins over Velasquez when both were still in college. If anyone knew what Velasquez was capable of, it was Morgan. He and Konrad were confident Brock would be too much for Cain. His athleticism was something tough to prepare for — there are no “Brock Lesnar types” you can bring into your training camp.
“If you haven’t worked out with him and felt that athleticism and explosion, it’s hard to comprehend. As big and strong as he looks, he actually feels more powerful and more explosive,” Konrad confided. “It’s hard to believe. You get so used to going with a guy that big, that explosive, that powerful, that when you step back and get in with someone who isn’t on that level you think, ‘Well, wait a minute here.’ Because he isn’t in the same league as what you are used to seeing.”
Velasquez, it turned out, was ready for everything Brock had to offer and then some. Lesnar took him down off the bat, but Cain was back to his feet in a matter of seconds. Once again, Brock seemingly panicked the first time he ate a punch from Velasquez, stumbling around the cage in a manner that can best be described as undignified. Unlike Carwin, who attacked a hurt Lesnar with reckless abandon, Velasquez picked his shots and finished the fight. It was a truly a masterful performance.
Looking back on the fight, Lesnar sees a game of inches that he lost. Physically, he says, he felt fine. But mentally he was exhausted. If he could take it back, if he could delay the Velasquez fight, he would. It was too much too soon.
Lesnar explained, “I experienced a lot last year, so from a fighting standpoint it probably wasn’t great timing. . . . But from the business side of things when me and my team sat down to accept the fight, we discussed positives versus the negatives, and the positives outweighed the negatives for fighting in October. So, at the end of the day, this is prize fighting and I answered the call. But I fell short.”
Lesnar ended the year as the biggest star in UFC history. In 2010 he became just the third man in combat sports to draw more than two million pay-per-view buys in a single year. But, in many ways, he was also a fighter on the edge of oblivion. He had looked bad against Carwin before his miraclulous comeback. Against Velasquez, he was simply outclassed. Another bad performance would leave fans wondering just how much the illness had taken out of him. He would likely have the same questions himself.
His return to the public eye, months after his Velasquez loss, shocked everyone, even those close to him. The notoriously private Lesnar had accepted Dana White’s offer to coach The Ultimate Fighter, uprooting his family from Minnesota for a six-week stint on the Vegas strip as a reality television star. The opposing coach was Brazilian Junior dos Santos, a boxer who was next in line for a title shot. When Velasquez was forced to undergo shoulder surgery, dos Santos was more than pleased to face Lesnar instead: “I got very happy when I heard the news I’d be coaching alongside Brock on TUF and Brock is a guy that’s bringing a lot of fans into MMA, he’s a guy that’s very well known in the U.S., and I’m a guy who’s starting to come up right now and this is a great opportunity for all of my fans to be able to see me.”
Dos Santos has learned what the UFC discovered years ago — Brock Lesnar is a
steam engine capable of carrying a fighter (or a promotion) to wealth beyond imagination. A fight with Velasquez may have been for the title, but a fight with Lesnar is for the spotlight, something the two men shared on the 13th season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Said dos Santos, “Being in front of the cameras for that long and being in the house and the show was a new experience for me, I really enjoyed it and being on the show with Brock was great because Brock is so used to the media spotlight and being in front of the cameras. I’m a professional guy, a serious guy, so it was a great experience for me, and I feel that both of us really did their best in the show. . . . Prior to the show I’d never actually met Brock, so I was a little bit surprised of how professional and how easy to deal with Brock was, even though we weren’t able to be together all that much. In the end it was great to be able to meet my next opponent and the experience overall was phenomenal.”
Lesnar was expected to battle neck and neck with YouTube sensation Kimbo Slice as a TUF ratings draw. Slice had invigorated the reality show during his tenure as a fighter, providing quite a punch for a rumored $500,000 price tag. Lesnar would command much more than that; the UFC’s contract with Spike TV was up at the end of 2011 and the Lesnar move was a power play by the UFC to show just how big their show could be. Instead, Lesnar and the show fizzled. The show with Brock as the star failed to meet the promotion’s lofty expectations. It barely kept up with the program’s average rating.
Things went from bad to worse when Lesnar’s diverticulitis flared up in the midst of training for his fight with dos Santos. Now the reality show wasn’t just a ratings disappointment — it was a ratings disappointment advertising a blockbuster main event that wasn’t going to happen. More importantly, Lesnar’s career might never be the same. He had 12 inches removed from his lower intestine at the Mayo Clinic, but was adamant that the surgery wouldn’t stop him for good.
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