According to the MMA Consensus rankings, Brock Lesnar is the number two heavyweight in the world. Oddly enough, though, you wouldn't think that he's deserving of such a position by some of the hate that gets spewed his way. After getting TKOed in his last fight against Cain Velasquez, Brock has become the victim of a hate train. In fact, most people think that he's been “exposed” and should simply hang up the gloves. Seems that it's the “in” thing to hate the guy. Well, now we're going to get him for thirteen episodes of The Ultimate Fighter, and I've decided to take a look at Brock's MMA career, and get to the hate to see if it's warranted.
First, let's take a look at Brock's credentials. He's been an athlete for most of his life, having wrestled for years on end, with his major success coming in his college years. He was an NJCAA All-American, Heavyweight Champion, NCAA national champion in 2000, and was also a two time Big Ten champion, and held a record of 106-5. It's an impeccable record. Afterward, he was a huge success in professional wrestling, and then moved on to football, and then back to wrestling in Japan. In MMA, said amateur wrestling credentials are invaluable, and I don't believe he would have received as much flak as he had if he had not been a professional wrestler.
Next, let's have a closer look at Brock Lesnar's record. His first MMA fight was pretty simple: he beat the holy hell out of Minh Soo Kim, which was more or less a can crush (despite Kim's Judo credentials). Coming to the UFC, he was matched up with Frank Mir, which was a bout that will eternally have a question mark over it. Should Brock have lost a point without warning? Would Frank Mir have armbarred him? Either way, Brock made a rookie mistake and was caught in a kneebar from a person with a nasty guard. So, from the outset, he was 1-1, but his only loss was to a former champion.
Next, we found Brock fighting the veteran Heath Herring in Minnesota. This bout saw Brock completely dominate Herring from bell to bell. More impressive was that Brock was able to do this against someone with over forty fights, which was completely unexpected. Now, did this necessarily mean that Brock should have been given a title shot? No, not really, but it happened anyway. When Brock Lesnar fought Randy Couture at UFC 91, we saw an incredibly competitive bout, but it was finished when Brock dropped Randy with a straight right, and then pounced on him like a starving man on a ham sandwich. Brock Lesnar, a former WWE superstar had just become the UFC Heavyweight Champion.
However, Brock's legitimacy was still in question, due to the fact that he had a first round loss to Frank Mir, who (after defeating Big Nog) pointed him out in the crowd saying “You've got my belt.” What followed was a myriad of personal attacks and nasty trash talk from the cocky Mir that took Lesnar's rage to the next level. What followed was a beatdown that shocked some old-school MMA fans. At UFC 100, Brock Lesnar took a Frank Mir who was in the best shape of his life, and outsmarted him in the grappling game. Brock beat Mir so badly that you'd think Frank was hitting on Sable beforehand.
So, before I talk about Brock's fight with Carwin, let me just put this in perspective. In the course of six fights, Brock had one loss to a former UFC Champion, and had dominated a skilled vet in Herring, TKOed Randy Couture, and then destroyed Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt Frank Mir in a ground fight. Whether people admit it or not, Brock Lesnar looked like a steamroller at this point. Unfortunately, diverticulitis struck.
When Brock fought Shane Carwin at UFC 116, he was headed into a gigantic test. Not only was he headed into a bout against someone with a similar build, but he was headed into a bout with a fighter who was a good enough wrestler to stop Brock's takedowns, and had some of the nastiest power punches in the division. Was it really surprising that Brock's biggest fears came to fruition in the first round? Not really. Shane Carwin beat Brock from pillar to post, landing sixty punches on Brock in that first round. Unfortunately for Carwin, Brock survived the beating, Carwin adrenaline dumped (and really, who wouldn't in that situation), and Brock sunk in the arm triangle. It was an awesome comeback, and a huge victory for someone whose career was in jeopardy not six months beforehand. It was the type of bout that you told everyone at work about. Yet, for some reason, now we find that most people only want to remember round one. More on that in a bit.
So, now we find ourselves at UFC 121, where Brock Lesnar was defeated by Cain Velasquez. What I want to pose at this point in the article is two questions:
Who can take a flush power punch from an MMA heavyweight?
Did Brock come into the fight with the correct strategy?
To answer the first question, let's look at Cain's punching power.
As you saw, Cain's punch registered at over 2230 pounds of force. To put that in perspective, that's 500 more pounds of force than what Rampage Jackson can deliver. Who can take that shot on the chin? The answer is: No one. If you look at a lot of heavyweight fights, you're not really going to see a lot of fighters taking those kind of shots flush and staying awake. I think that the records of the top 3 power punchers in the UFC's heavyweight division speaks for that fact. If you can't take Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin, or Junior Dos Santos down, you're in for a world of hurt no matter who you are.
Second question was about Brock's strategy, and I believe that this played a big factor in the fight. Truthfully, I believe that Brock was taking Cain very lightly, and it's not hard to understand why. You just took a beating from Shane Carwin and didn't die of a brain hemorrhage, so who is going to put you away, right? Well, Brock learned the lesson the hard way. He spent far too much time rushing Cain, rather than reintroducing people to the patient Brock that manhandled Herring, beat Randy, and destoryed Frank Mir. The poor strategy of striking with a superior striker on top of trying to bully Cain was more Brock's undoing than the quality of his chin (though he could certainly stand to simply continue to train more stand up with Peter Welch and Pat Barry).
So, looking at Brock's record and accomplishments, does he deserve the hate? If you're Hispanic, a little bit because of the burrito and Corona comment, but by that logic you should hold Chael Sonnen to the same measure. Beyond that, I don't believe he's some sort of a fraud. At this point, Brock is still an incredibly lethal ground and pound fighter, which is a mold that has been incredibly successful in the UFC. In the same way that you're in trouble if you stand with Cain Velasquez or Junior dos Santos, you're in deep water in Brock Lesnar takes you to the ground. Does he have a weakness? Yes, but so do most fighters.
Also, where does the logic come from that Brock is a fraud? So, if a wrestler loses to a better striker, then he's a terrible fighter? Well, if that's the case, then Matt Hughes stinks for losing to Thiago Alves. Oh, I guess Mark Coleman and Josh Barnett deserve no success in the business for being demolished by Mirko Cro Cop. Though I hate Rashad Evans, I don't think he stinks because Machida knocked him out. Fact of the matter is that there is no logic in the Brock Lesnar hate, and the fight between he and Junior Dos Santos has the potential to be the fight that Brock uses to get back on the horse. Either way, I'm hoping he sticks around for a while longer.
Maybe he should F-5 someone on TUF?
-Micah C
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Good article!
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am way off base here, but it seems people in your “camp”(the Fedor fought cans, Lesnar is waaay underrated and hated for no reason, please stop picking on him) are relatively new to MMA. Your strong affection towards Lesnar and an after-the-fact wikipedia understanding of Fedor smacks of someone who rode in in 2007 or beyond during some TUF season number that is a multiple of 2. Not that there is anything wrong with this, every new fan that becomes an MMA hardcore is a step toward global domination, but it makes it easy to fall into the trap of a short sighted understanding of MMA that doesn’t take into consideration the true context of a fighter’s career. And that risks damage to the sport as a whole by hijacking legacies and retconning great fighters into smoke and mirrors unfairly.
ReplyDeleteFedor, constantly talked about as a “super LHW” and a tiny HW was fighting Matt Lindland who was less than a year removed from a very very contested bout with Quinton Jackson at LHW, Fedor’s “natural weight”. If you had ever seen that particular bout, from the WFA, it is easy to see how at the time, Lindland would be a credible opponent. To me, he was at least a top five MW and arguably a top ten LHW if he had decided to focus on that division. But that was how I saw the bout at the time. On top of that, Lindland was a late replacement! Without understanding the context of how that bout was seen at the time, it is easy to wikipedia the two fighters and write the fight off as can-crushing.
This is no different than people saying “oh, Tito smashed Tanner but the win is worthless because Tanner was a MW” disregarding he was a top level LHW and even at times HW fighter for most of his career.
Another analogy, from the world of heavy metal is “Dude fuck Slayer or Sabbath that shit is for pussies man SLIPKNOT is waaay fuckin heavier”. That is an immature opinion that ignores that Slipknot/Korn etc and these bands play a run of the mill style from the 90s that was a cut and paste type of music, that in context against Undergound Death Metal at the time such as Morbid Angel, wasn’t that profound, new, or creative or even very heavy. Where as bands like Slayer and Sabbath in their own day were by far the heaviest, most creative, and envelope pushing bands in the world of metal, period. Because ‘Knot or Korn or Limp Bizkit added DJ scratches, excessive “muthafuckaZ”, tuned their guitars obscenely low and rode an open E to the point of nausea doesn’t mean that shit is very heavy, or metal. Certainly not compared to the true masters. But to a 14 year old kid in now archaic and dated Jnco Jeans in the 90s or early 2000s, that shit sounded like the totally sickest fuckin’ shit ever dawg!!!! Why? Because they had no context from which to truly judge the music.
Same is true of a 10 year old Justin Bieber fan, who hasn’t had the chance to digest real music like the Beatles, or Pink Floyd, or even legitimate pop music such as Michael Jackson.
No disrespect in this post intended, just consider it a piece of Unintelligent babble to another Unintelligent writer. Shoot me an email if you want to battle-rap further.