Brock Lesnar: Former Champ's Comeback Bid Ends on Sour Note

You wanted Brock Lesnar to succeed.

You wanted him to prove his doubters wrong.

You wanted him to show he still had it.

But, in the end, Lesnar showed us what we knew all along: that he was a 34-year-old human being who had just had surgery due to diverticulitis.

On Dec. 30, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nev., Brock Lesnar lost via TKO in the first round to Alistair Overeem and retired from the UFC.

We ignored the inevitable because we didn't want to believe that a man who seemed indestructible could indeed be destroyed. This was Brock Lesnar, after all, a man who was a living, breathing giant who exploded onto the scene and took down such fighters as Randy Couture, Frank Mir and Shane Carwin, and did so convincingly.

If Lesnar could suffer such a swift nosedive, that meant anybody could, including other giants in the UFC. We didn't want to believe this, and we certainly weren't prepared for it.

Neither was Lesnar. He did everything he could to come back and give UFC fans a show. He got rocked by Cain Velasquez in October 2010 and suffered two setbacks due to diverticulitis after that, but he still kept moving.

His story is inspirational in itself. This was a man who knew what his passion was, and he was at least going to give it one more try before he up and quit. When there were questions about him possibly joining his roots in the WWE, he scoffed. He wasn't a WWE star anymore, the UFC had become his calling.

We could see the writing on the wall before UFC 141 on Friday.

We knew Overeem had the striking power to drop Lesnar in the first round. We knew Lesnar was rusty and a shell of his former self. We knew it would take nothing short of a miracle for Lesnar to win. But we trudged on, like Lesnar did, undeterred, looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.

In the end, it was a disappointing ending to what could have been a much brighter career.

And it reminded us that Lesnar was human, just like us.