In Defense of Brock Lesnar

Brock Lesnar is a polarizing figure, to be sure.  Anyone who watched UFC 100 with any more than two people or who even caught a whiff of an MMA forum after the event already knows that very well.  Hell, even if you watched the event in a cave, the boos emanating from your television would have told you about all you need to know.  Those boos were actually almost as fierce and savage as the drooling, cage-head butting shot of Brock yelling at the camera (that will live forever as a classic .gif) was.

I’m not going to go into what it is about Lesnar that makes fans hate him.  That is all too easy to answer and has been done extensively elsewhere.  What I will do is play devil’s advocate here and tell you why some fans may love him, and offer some rebuttals to a number of the things I’ve been hearing and reading since Lesnar’s destruction of Frank Mir.

Why would I do this?  Well, for one, a little hate mail never did anything but good for a writer’s career, and for two, there’s something very interesting in the way that people react to a classic villain.  Not the predictable “I hate that guy” reaction, but the behavior that spawns from that, or the folks that would rather counter the prevailing opinion and cheer for a guy who seems to provide no reason for us to do so.

The behavior that I’m eluding to is the almost immediate discrediting of Lesnar’s accomplishments that I’ve heard people take part in, or read online.  The naysayers (and there are tons of them) have said a number of things, but only a few of them truly offend my senses as a knowledgeable MMA fan and writer.  Here are some of the gems:

–Brock’s style of fighting takes “no skill”, and he is “only good because he’s big”.

I’ve heard this a lot since UFC 100, and it never ceases to amaze me.  There are two ways to look at this…either the person saying this really does believe that it is true, and thus has no real knowledge of the sport and how it works, or they have decided to make themselves believe this because they really hate Lesnar that much.  They hate him so much, in fact, that they can’t allow themselves to give him the slightest modicum of credit.

Either way, this kind of thinking is an assault on the very idea of mixed martial arts, and I’ll tell you why.

What’s the first thing that someone says to you when they’ve never seen MMA before?  They’ll insult the ground game.  “Oh, they look like they’re (insert sexual act), ha, ha!”  “That’s so barbaric, he’s just hitting the guy while he’s down!”  “What skill does that take?”  And it goes on and on.  Well, you are engaging in the very same uneducated style of thinking if you truly believe that Lesnar is “only good because he’s big”.  Haven’t we learned over the years that size alone does not allow you to succeed in the long-term in MMA, especially against the likes of former world champions?

Hell, anyone with a history of watching MMA that goes back even a year and a half should know that, because what did we see when Lesnar and Mir met the first time?  Mir tapped out an overexcited Lesnar in about 90 seconds, that’s what.  This time, the results were much different.  Do you expect a rational person to believe that the same guy in a physical sense improve his performance that much without improving his actual skill level?

If you think someone who is merely big and strong- someone who lacks skill- can succeed the way that Lesnar has, what does that say about your view of the sport?

Someone even said that Brock Lesnar is “the Bob Sapp of MMA”.  No, Bob Sapp is the Bob Sapp of MMA.  Lesnar is better in every way, and has beaten top notch competition, with or without a weight advantage.  Ask some of these doubters whether they think that Fedor Emelianenko, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, Josh Barnett, Antonio “Rodrigo” Nogueira and other dominant heavyweights of this era should have their wins against smaller-sized heavyweights discredited.  Suddenly, they’ll change their tune…go figure.

–Lesnar uses “lay and pray” to beat opponents.

This almost made me soil myself when I read it.  Have the attention spans of MMA fans decreased so heavily that beating an opponent silly in 7 minutes is now considered “lay and pray”?  Unbelievable.  I know that on the internet, speaking in extreme and absolute terms is the way to get some much needed e-ttention, but sometimes I wonder whether the bulk of MMA fans understand basic terms of this sport.  Hint: nobody fighting in the UFC regularly is a “tomato can” or “C level fighter”, and no one who pastes an opponent on the ground with power shots en route to an early second-round stoppage is using “lay and pray” tactics. 

It’s as if these guys have never seen an old Mark Kerr or Mark Coleman fight.  How about the whole mid-to-late 90’s, when fighters with only wrestling credentials were entering the sport left and right, not knowing what to do and gassing out in five minutes, so they’d resort to just laying on their opponent, getting stood up, then taking them down and repeating the process?  Now that’s lay and pray.

It’s actually intriguing to me that seemingly knowledgeable fans could convince themselves that a fighter the caliber of Brock Lesnar is a bum with only size to his advantage, even after seeing example after example in MMA fights of how size alone gets you nowhere.  Didn’t we learn that during UFC I, for crying out loud?

I even had someone tell me that Lesnar doesn’t use wrestling skills in his fights.  No, single and double-leg takedowns are not wrestling techniques, apparently.  Also, controlling someone as talented and shifty as Frank Mir on the ground does not require any type of skill, let alone skill that may be accumulated during an amateur wrestling career.  Sigh.

So this leads me to my other question.  What makes a fan cheer for this guy?

Well, the first part of this article provides a compelling reason.  Just as people may be dissuaded from liking a band, actor, show, movie, or athlete based upon the fan base that (obnoxiously) cheers them on, couldn’t a person be encouraged to cheer for someone based on the relative ridiculousness of those decrying their participation? 

I’ll admit, I could identify with Brock Lesnar a lot more after hearing some of the crazy sentiments I heard about his skills and his ability.  Imagine being Lesnar himself, having tackled a whole new sport and, in a few short years, beating two former world champions in your first five fights, only to be booed mercilessly?

And furthermore, why do we expect any other reaction from a fighter when they are booed the way Lesnar was?  Should we expect a man who just trained for eight to twelve weeks straight, all while managing the day-to-day stress of being a fighter, all in the hopes of putting on a great performance to act any different when faced with such a crowd response?  Should he have grabbed the mic from Joe Rogan, gotten on his knees and begged for forgiveness?

That brings me to the biggest reason why Lesnar probably has as many fans as he does have.  He’s not fake.  If you follow “mainstream” sports, you know that the average interview with a professional athlete is about as exciting as listening to a politician on the campaign trail dance around tough issues.  You hear the same clichés, over and over.  Good lord, if I hear “I’m gonna go in there, and I’m gonna knock him out,” one more time in an MMA fight hype video, I’m going to…okay, I’m not going to do anything, because I know I’ll hear that about 38 more times in this calendar year alone, and I don’t want to be held to anything.

You get my point, though.  Modern athletes are boring, because the slightest misstep or colorful quote can land them in hot water with sponsors, owners, fellow athletes and the fans themselves.  Lesnar is great proof of this.  Considering that his sport of choice involves beating another grown man to a living pulp, was there really anything offensive about Lesnar saying that he pulled a “horseshoe” out of Mir’s posterior and beat him with it?  Or that he planned on having sex with his wife later that night?  Or (gasp!) stating that he would be drinking a different beer than the one that sponsors the fights?

Perhaps we’re angry that Lesnar didn’t “kiss and make up” with Mir after the fight.  After all, these things tend to go the same way, each time; the UFC (or anyone else) promotes a “blood feud” between “two fighters who don’t like each other”, and they go on to verbally rip each other professionally and personally for two to three months, then after the fight it’s all hugs and apologies.  Does that really seem natural, though?  What’s wrong with a guy saying, “I don’t care about whether you were promoting the fight; you said some nasty crap and I’m not going to forget it”?  I’m not saying that every MMA fight has to involve a huge feud, but if fighters are going to be feuding, wouldn’t you rather it be authentic? 

I’ll be honest with you, even though I don’t pretend that Lesnar’s post-fight antics were respectful or classy, when I watched the event with a large group, we all laughed at his comments.  It’s great to have fighters like Georges St. Pierre in the sport- excellent ambassadors who always know the right thing to say- but isn’t it just a little bit refreshing to have a fighter who really says what he wants to say, regardless of what people will think?  At least you know where you stand with this guy.

So maybe that’s why some people cheer for this guy.  He represents what a lot of us would love to be: he’s big, strong, physically gifted, learns quickly and can say anything he wants at any time.  He lives on his own terms, he doesn’t seem to worry about what anyone thinks, and he is who he is, take it or leave it.  When you look at it that way, it’s not so hard to see why someone would identify with Lesnar.

Ironically enough, it’s the realness that Lesnar brings (and not the fakeness associated with his former employer, the WWE) that is landing him in hot water with fans.  When Lesnar feuds with fighters, he really means it and doesn’t forgive everything as soon as the final bell rings.  When he is asked a question, he answers truthfully without regard to people’s feelings.  And when he fights, he looks to brutalize his opponent in the quickest way possible, without regard to flashy techniques and jiu-jitsu credentials.

Perhaps the former WWE star is actually too real for MMA fans?

by Jon Hartley for Fightmania.com

Tags: Brock Lesnar, Fedor Emelianenko, Frank Mir, Georges St. Pierre, Josh Barnett, Mark Coleman, UFC