Breaking Down Brock: What Brock Lesnar Has To Do To Evolve As a Fighter

To the victor, come the spoils.

Considering what UFC Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar endured in the past year and to be mauled on by Shane Carwin, only to come back and submit the fellow behemoth, is an accomplishment in itself. The fact that Lesnar is standing atop of the heavyweight mountain in only six professional fights is remarkable. On Saturday night the former WWE superstar, who also had fellow alumni like 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin and Dwayne 'The Rock’, Johnson in attendance, showed the heart and resiliency of a champion.

However Lesnar also showed that he does have some flaws in his arsenal. The real question that looms is not ‘what is it going to take to put Brock away?’ it’s rather ‘what does Brock have to improve on before he gets put away? ‘

Striking

This is easily the biggest weakness in Lesnar’s game. In the opening round he was tagged with an uppercut that had him reeling and then he scrambled away by using his massive forearms to cover his face. Carwin rushed Lesnar like an angry bull and had him on his back, while he repeatedly fed shots to the wounded champion. Lesnar somehow managed to get his opponent off of him but Carwin refused to quit as he landed a elbow to the face of Lesnar, by then the champion was in survival mode and hung on to absorb all the punishment he was receiving.

Lesnar’s striking needs a lot of work, as Saturday night showed that he couldn’t throw a punch properly. Notice that when he throws those cinder block-like hands of his, they are very slow and stiff. And although he holds a lot of power in both hands, he lacks technique.

It’s been evident in the past that wrestlers traditionally do not rely much on their stand up skills as they do on their wrestling and their work from the guard, as a result fighters like Tito Ortiz and Matt Hughes haven’t been successful on the feet against strikers. Lesnar will have to keep this in mind especially when he’s up against technically sound boxers like Junior Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez.

Defense from the Guard

During the first round, Lesnar was using his forearms to protect himself while Shane Carwin was pummeling him. It didn’t look like Carwin was doing much damage but at the same time Lesnar wasn’t doing much to defend himself either.

Lesnar is lucky he could use his 265lb frame to his advantage by hovering up and blocking Carwin’s punches but he’s going to have to adapt and learn some new defending techniques against future opponents.

If he happens to be on his back again, he can try avoiding damage by grabbing the top of his opponents’ head and pull them in to control them. He can also grab his opponents’ wrists to control and prevent them from striking. Another technique is to grab a hold of his opponents’ waist and pull them in, this is possibly the best way to avoid damage from the guard in the bottom position.

From there, once he establishes control of his opponent from the guard, he can reverse and get into top position. This is executed by wrapping his legs around his opponents’ back, elevating his hips so that he can create a centre of gravity and then roll.  He also can simply just escape the guard and retreat back to his feet, once he establishes controlling his opponent he can use his legs to push off his opponents legs.

Wrestlers traditionally do not like to be put on their back and work from the bottom guard.  This could be due to the lack of defense Lesnar showed during the bout and/or just the inexperience from him too.

Awarenes

His bout with Carwin was evident that his cage awareness needs to be better, but to be fair that comes along with more experience. It also has a lot to do with his training camp and the strategy they execute during the fight. There were times where he could of created distance and allowed himself to stay out of the range of Carwin by forcing his opponent to press the action, but instead he stepped inside Carwin’s range and paid for it. 

Lesnar’s strength is obviously his wrestling but that doesn’t mean it has to always be relied on to pick up a victory, he is a good enough athlete to be able to adapt and learn new techniques faster than others. This is how some fighters, who rely on one aspect of their game plan, can become being one-dimensional and fail to evolve in the future. If he is not as anxious to get into a dominant position quickly and rather be more composed during a fight, Lesnar will progress along the way.

Brock Lesnar is now earning the respect he deserves as a mixed martial artist. His brute strength, incredible agility and massive size have only added to the success he’s achieved in his career thus far.

Now the challenge is if he can formulate a proper game plan and work on his weaknesses, which will bring out more use for his size and strength. Of course, this all comes along with more experience and the more experience he gets, the better he’ll be.

Once he’s able to point out his weaknesses and adapt to the octagon then there will be no reason to argue why Brock Lesnar is the most dominant fighter in UFC.