UFC 131: Lesnar Injury Was Bad Business for the UFC, but Better for Fans

It's no secret that Brock Lesnar is a big draw for the UFC. Love him or hate him, you won't ignore him. You want to see him shoot a double and then pound someone's face to mush, or you want his takedown to get stuffed and watch as he panics and takes a beating.

That bizarre dynamic, coupled with his marketability from other athletic endeavors such as the WWE and a near walk-on NFL career, has made him the biggest draw on pay-per-view in MMA. Every time he's in the octagon, he's good business for the UFC.

Thus, when he was stricken with another bout of diverticulitis and forced to pull out of this weekend's UFC 131 headliner against Junior (Cigano) dos Santos, Dana White and his cohorts were forced to watch millions of dollars float out the window in PPV buys.

But here's the thing: the replacement fight is actually better. A lot better.

The Lesnar/dos Santos bout was a formality of the two coaching different teams in The Ultimate Fighter, but it didn't serve any great purpose. It was a question of Brock being able to hold Cigano down long and hit him enough to get the ref to step in, or Junior keeping it standing long enough to hit Brock with a good one and send him breakdancing across the cage, looking for a way out.

The end result would have seen Dos Santos right back where he already was or Brock where he had no business being—challenging for the heavyweight title.

Junior took the Lesnar fight to stay active while champion Cain Velasquez got healthy enough to compete, and Lesnar took it to jump the queue and "get his belt back," despite the non-existent appeal of Lesnar/Velasquez II.

However Lesnar's illness has opened the door for former interim champion Shane Carwin to enter the fracas. And if you like big-time heavyweight fights, this is about as good as it gets.

In a throwback to the days of boxing's glory, Saturday night will see a clash between an irresistible force and an immovable object. The sheer power of Carwin's hands versus the speed and fluidity of Dos Santos'.

This, folks, is what fight fans crave.

Gone is the notion that it's a one-trick fight where the wrestler will wrestle or the boxer will box and the fight will end how it does. Sure, Carwin has wrestling chops, but it's not exactly what he's known for. He's known for putting his hands on people and watching them fall. So is Dos Santos.

While the lesser fan, perhaps a fan of Lesnar's athleticism or marketability, won't be so quick to drop his $50 on the card as he was when TUF 13 started, the fan who knows the fight game is frothing at the mouth. The idea of two larger-than-life warriors going toe-to-toe is as good as it gets.

Add to that fact the No.1 contendership still belongs to the winner, leading to a guaranteed fresh face for Velasquez in his title defense, and the long-term positives are just as evident as those of the short term.

So sit back on Saturday, put your feet up, and try not to blink. Great heavyweight action is a blink-and-you-missed-it proposition, and UFC 131 is the embodiment of that idea.

Get well soon Brock, but if these are the fights at the top of the division in your absence, there's no need to hurry back.