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Brock Lesnar appreciation day
By Zach Arnold | March 22, 2009
I wrote this article last night and I noticed this morning on the site here some similar feelings being echoed. Great minds think alike, or something:
What Lashley’s struggles last night should highlight, in the big picture, is just how talented Brock Lesnar is. Lesnar and Lashley both have decorated amateur backgrounds and both men train with great camps (Lesnar training with Greg Nelson and Erik Paulson, Lashley at ATT). The difference is that Lesnar has some intangibles that you can’t teach and he also has the physical size and power that is ruthless in the cage. There are a lot of Lesnar haters out there who don’t believe in his stock and think that he’s ready to be picked apart by Frank Mir in July. I’m not so sure about that. Mir’s fight style may be kryptonite to Lesnar’s skill set, but Brock is a fast learner and has some of the best training in the world. Plus, consider how much time he has had to train recently — the delay of two extra months should make Lesnar that much more dangerous of a fighter. If Lesnar can’t make Mir mentally break, then he will probably make him physically break down in the cage.
As for the actual main theme of that article I wrote (and linked up above), the same veteran promoter I quoted in the article said that outside of UFC, he thinks MMA has ‘one foot in the grave’ as far as business is concerned.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I just got done watching the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. Some of those guys would adapt very well to MMA. Others not so much. Kind of like with BJJ, not all styles are made for MMA… And not all athletes are either.
Brock is so scary because he is really 3 things:
1. Genetic Freak
2. Quick Learner
3. Hard Worker
Those 3 typically don’t occur in the same athlete.
Speaking of the NCAA Wrestling Tournament… One guy who I hope makes the transition is J Jaggers. He seems to have the skills and the personality to be a real threat at Featherweight.
I agree with you 100%, Zach.
Brock Lesnsar is the most gifted athlete in MMA today. Followed in my opinion by GSP and A Silva. Don’t forget he was offered a spot on a good NFL teams practice squad ( there are only 4-8 practice guys per team) without havin played football in college. The NFL is the pinacle of athletics. You have to be fast strong and explosive. That’s not to take away from soccer players or anyone else.
I don’t understand the Brock hate. He should have bear Mir the first time. He made a white belt joy jitsu mistake. By re time you get a blue belt to know how to get out of that lock. His hands looked grew against Randy and he is the fastest heavyweight I have ever seen.
Agreed, but there are several considerations that should be mentioned.
First and foremost is that Lashley was fighting in a ring and with a ref that allowed them to languish in the corner. Guida was able to tie Lashley up and hang out against the ropes. (And no, I don’t think that Guida could have done that against Lesnar, even in the same ring with the same ref. I do, however, think that the ropes and the ref were definite factors in how the fight played out.)
Zach, you wrote this of Lashley in your article:
“He’s nowhere near ready for UFC”
Do you believe that he wouldn’t beat any UFC heavyweight in the UFC’s cage? I believe he’d beat several. My point is that it’s not as big of a deal as it once was for a fighter to be in the UFC.
I’m not disputing that Lashley isn’t a finished product or a top 25 fighter. My point is that worse fighters than Lashley apparently meet the Zuffa standard for what is allowed on their shows.
I don’t think the moral of Lashley’s performance is that we should be thankful for Lesnar. I’d much prefer Lesnar clear out the UFC’s paper thin heavyweight division of aging stars and oft untested prospects before we go doing that. The moral should be that being a pro wrestler with some amateur credentials does not a legitimate MMA prospect make alone. In that sense, we’ve learned nothing.
And Sheridan was right to apologize about the MMA fights. They were pitiful as far as entertainment value went. But you know what? If they had been matched with a trio of Warpaths and run through, it wouldn’t have been any greater a display of MMA skill, though it perhaps would have been more “entertaining”, whatever that is these days.
Ed. — ‘And Sheridan was right to apologize about the MMA fights.’ He was apologizing for the fights existing to the boxing audience, not because they sucked. Why did you feel the need to twist words here extemporaneously? You’re going off on a tangent here. Doesn’t deserve oxygen.
I wouldn’t say the UFC Heavyweight Division is paperthin. It is weaker, but it still has 50% of the Top 10 and 50% of the Top 20.
If Lesnar continues to win, this could be his next 3 fights: Mir, Nogueira, & Carwin. That’s a solid and worthy list of contenders.
If Lesnar beats Mir, that makes Mir, what, the Chael Sonnen of the heavyweights? He basically already is, afterall, except that people recognized Sonnen as not being a top 3 (or even top 10) middleweight and they seem to think Mir is.
The Alan UFC hatefest continnues again…. This is getting old….
Mir tapped Lesnar and KO’d Nogueira. Sonnen had to go to a decision with a mental midget who wasn’t even paying attention to the fight most of the time.
Hate to break up your Zuffa hate fest….
He tapped Lesnar before Brock did anything and beat the worst looking Noguiera ever. And so if he loses, he becomes exactly as I said: Another Chael Sonnen. He’d probably get lit up by Vera again too.
Whether or not Lesnar had done anything, we now know Mir tapping out Lesnar was a big win. Heck, everybody thought Mir/Lesnar 1 was a selling tickets fight (which it was). Who could have predicted by the end of the year, that both would be Top 5 guys who just beat Couture & Nogueira? I certaintly wouldn’t have guessed it.
Obviously, Mir/Lesnar 1, in hindsight, was a big fight, we just didn’t know it. It’s not like Mir’s win over Lesnar happened over 5 years ago like Barnett’s win over Couture….
No one knew that because Lesnar had yet to win any fights against actual talent. You don’t get credit for the wins someone gets after you beat them. And I still don’t see either man as a solid top five heavyweight anymore than Sonnen was a top 5 middle or Kitaoka as a top five lightweight. Essentially the same credentials. Them fighting each other again doesn’t prove much either way unless Mir wins.
‘And Sheridan was right to apologize about the MMA fights.’ He was apologizing for the fights existing to the boxing audience, not because they sucked. Why did you feel the need to twist words here extemporaneously? You’re going off on a tangent here. Doesn’t deserve oxygen
He endlessly droned on about the “submission attempts” and “strategy” and the difficulty of learning them as a cover for the fact that the fights were shit. It actually reminded me of the old UFC days where the announcers would apologize for piss poor fights like Severn/Shamrock II, talking about how the crowd didn’t understand the deep strategy of two men circling each other for a half an hour.
To Lashley’s credit. He was going to drop Guida on his head in the early moments and while still fresh maybe could have finished him. But Guida grabbed a straight up headlock around the rope and held on for dear life. The ref should have deducted a point it was so blatant. He made like Ripley at the end of Aliens, hanging onto the ladder by the airlock.
If Lesnat can decisively beat Mir he will fight Congo, the Couture/Nog winner, then Carwin and Velasquez and will me a money printing machine.
Brock probably already is the biggest star in MMA history and I think he has Hulk Hogan crossover potential.
“If Lesnat can decisively beat Mir he will fight Congo”
Really? You think that after Kongo theoretically beats Antoni Hardonk, that he deserves a title shot? When has Kongo ever looked impressive in the Octagon against half-decent competition?
I’d be shocked if they don’t go straight to Lesnar/Mir winner vs. Couture/Nogueira.
Mir just can’t get a break. The guy is a former UFC champ with a 12-3 record (2 of those losses post accident), with wins over Sylvia, Lesnar, and Big Nog, and he’s being compared to Sonnen?
Name me two HW fighters with better wins over the last year than Mir. I’ll even give you a freebie: Fedor. Who’s left? Arlovski? No. Barnett? No. Sylvia? Ha.
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Mir just can’t get a break. The guy is a former UFC champ with a 12-3 record (2 of those losses post accident), with wins over Sylvia, Lesnar, and Big Nog, and he’s being compared to Sonnen?
If Mir was an elite fighter before his accident, he probably isn’t one afterwards, which is when he lost those fights and looked like garbage against Christison.
Name me two HW fighters with better wins over the last year than Mir. I’ll even give you a freebie: Fedor. Who’s left? Arlovski? No. Barnett? No. Sylvia? Ha.
Again: He beat Lesnar before Lesnar was ranked by anyone. If we’re gonna give him credit for Lesnar’s wins, then Joaquim Ferrera deserves a spot in everyone’s top tens, no questions asked.
“Again: He beat Lesnar before Lesnar was ranked by anyone.”
So what? That’s still a quality win. Beat an unknown guy that legitimizes himself as a top 5 fighter (10 for UFC haters) less than a year later, and that win still counts for something. It’d be one thing if the fight was 2+ years ago and the fighters may be completely different now (Fitch vs Alves for example), but it only took Lesnar like 8 months after his loss to Mir to beat Couture and Herring.
“If we’re gonna give him credit for Lesnar’s wins, then Joaquim Ferrera deserves a spot in everyone’s top tens, no questions asked.”
This is so dumb it makes me question why I even bothered talking to you in the first place. I won’t make that mistake again. Don’t play in traffic.
So what? That’s still a quality win. Beat an unknown guy that legitimizes himself as a top 5 fighter (10 for UFC haters) less than a year later, and that win still counts for something.
What is that something? Mir can’t take personal credit for Lesnar’s advances, nor should he recieve it in terms of being pulled along in the rankings. If Lesnar beats him and then becomes a dominant fighter in the division without a rubber match, what do we do? Leave Mir there in perpetuity?
This is so dumb
It is. Ferrera beats Junior Dos Santos and then gets no bump for Dos Santos’ win over Werdum 11 months later. Why? Oh, because he doesn’t have a UFC contract.
Alan is right.