Brock Lesnar: Tempering Expectations on a Potential UFC Return

It’s looking more and more likely: Brock Lesnar is coming back to the UFC.

His present employers in the world of staged combat are preparing to lose the former heavyweight champion back to MMA if reports are to be believed, and it’s most likely that will entail another run in the biggest promotion going.

Sure, Bellator will be in the mix, and it might even land him. But until that happens, one would have to think he has his eyes on a return to the Octagon.

With the talk of his return reaching fever pitch, so too does the enthusiasm to see him do his thing once again. Lesnar boosters point to his demolition of Frank Mir and successful title defense against Shane Carwin as memories of perhaps the greatest heavyweight of all time plying his trade.

They point to him winning the title in his fourth professional fight, beating a legend—Randy Couture—in the process.

They point to his unfortunate bout of diverticulitis as the reason he rapidly fell from grace and could never recover—an argument bolstered by pro-wrestling personality and personal friend of Lesnar Paul Heyman, who swears that’s what cost the former NCAA wrestling champion during his last run in the UFC.

And they’re all wrong. Every last one of them.

They’re wrong in what they’re saying, they’re wrong in why they’re saying it, and they’re wrong about how Lesnar’s return to the UFC will look should it happen.

The reality about Lesnar is that he is and always was a remarkable physical specimen with the incredible athleticism and wrestling chops to wade through the shallow waters of heavyweight mixed martial arts. On his merits as a combatant against the very best in the game in 2014, he’s likely to be in trouble.

Lesnar, at 37 years old and who will have been out of action for more than three years by the time he's eligible to return in 2015, has not gotten better since he left.

Everyone else has.

Alistair Overeem violently chased him from the UFC in late 2011, and he can’t stay in the top 10 for more than a fight or two without getting violently stopped in his own right.

Guys such as Junior Dos Santos, Travis Browne and Stipe Miocic are guarding the top of the division, while other guys such as Josh Barnett, Mark Hunt and Andrei Arlovski are in the middle of the pack.

Would it be reasonable to take Lesnar against any of those guys in a comeback fight?

No. It wouldn’t.

And that’s to say nothing of champion Cain Velasquez, who already mugged Lesnar once and would surely do it again, or Fabricio Werdum, who sits on the interim throne and would provide a laundry list of problems for Lesnar if the two were to meet.

The fact is that Lesnar was a limited, if intriguing commodity as a mixed martial artist, one that drew eyes more for his celebrity and sheer freakishness than his fistic successes. His 5-3 career record is soundly representative of what he was as an athlete: good on the basis of his physical gifts and athletic background but inconsistent under the expectation of being one of the best in the world.

Many will refute that idea by pointing to his illness, and that might have been influential. Truthfully, no one will know how much that slowed him at the time, but to rely on the fervent shouting of a pro-wrestling manager as support for the argument is unwise.

The results spoke for themselves for a large swath of Lesnar’s run, and those results saw him barely survive Carwin before getting badly hurt by both Velasquez and Overeem.

Reasons for those results are largely irrelevant—the reality is that they took place. They can’t be ignored simply because it’s convenient in building excitement for his return.

With 2015 on the horizon and a Brock Lesnar UFC return seemingly coming with it, some tempering of expectations would be best for anyone interested. A reduced version existed at the end of his last UFC tenure, and an older, rustier version of the same guy is likely coming back.

No amount of recounting past glories or dwelling on past illnesses is going to change that.

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