Falls Count Anywhere

08-06-08

Anybody seen Hugo?

Brock Lesnar. Wow. I’ve taken heat for my massive support of this massive man for years, and I stand by everything I’ve ever said about him. He’s one of the greatest athletes in the history of pro wrestling.

Not the greatest wrestler, though he had some fantastic matches against guys like Eddy Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and especially against Kurt Angle. He left wrestling to play football, which didn’t work out, and then he got into the MMA game. He’s probably the most important future property there is in MMA right now. Yes, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddle and maybe someone like George St. Pierre are bigger draws, but none of them could be as big as Lesnar could be in the future.

Let us start with a fact: Brock drew 600,000 buys when he fought Frank Mir. Yeah, there was the Sylvia vs. Noguiera fight on top, but the buy-rate was drawn by Lesnar getting his first fight. And he lost, and yet, he seemed to be more popular coming out of the fight than he was going in.

And he lost.

That’s not what normally happens. He fought a visually spectacular fight, tossing around Mir and hammering him, but he got caught in a kneebar and that forced him to tap out. Few other fighters draw like that.

Look at Fedor Emilianenko and Affliction. He’s the best fighter in the World at Heavyweight and he had all the push you could imagine for his US fight last month. What happened? It didn’t do 1/5 of Brock drew. Now true, there’s the fact that it was UFC that put Brock on, but still, a name fighter should be drawing big.

The biggest plus in Lesnar’s corner is the fact that he’s an incredible athlete. He’s an NCAA champion, almost made it into the NFL, and he was occasionally spectacular in the WWE. His first fight was just a mauling, and his second was a good and fast fight. He should have won that fight, and frankly there are people who said that the ref was wrong in not stopping it, but really, he lost and he came out of it strong.

Now he’s fighting Heath Harring. This’ll be one of those fights where a finish will be hard to earn on either side. Heath’s hard to finish and Brock will be all-out at him. I expect Brock to throw more punches, hit harder and then try to take it to the ground. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to stand up with Harring that long.

We're sold.

We haven’t seen Brock tested, as he really did handle Mir and just made a stupid mistake. It’ll be interesting to see if he can win against a guy who has a long tradition of fighting (Heath’s been involved in MMA for more than a decade) and who is known as a tough guy to finish.

If Brock wins, I’d expect a big buy-rate for his next fight. In this case, I’d say it would be hard to not put him against a top-level fighter. Harring’s not the peak, but he’s pretty close. I would also think that a Lesnar vs. Mir rematch might be a money-maker. If Brock loses, well it could spell the end of his UFC contract…or it could launch him further.

If Brock does the same thing he did last time and bullies Harring around the cage and then gets caught in a submission, well, that’ll hurt him, but I imagine UFC wouldn’t drop him. On the other hand, if it’s a fast KO, then you’d see him cut. If they have a Fight of the Year sort of match, which I’d say Brock would be unlikely to win, then I could see them actually doing a rematch in February with Brock being pushed as the avenger.

The key is the fight has to draw money. If it does 500,000 buys, then it’s a success and I doubt whatever the outcome is will change Brock’s employment. If it’s 400,000, it better be a good fight, and any lower than that and it’s gotta be a win for Brock for him to keep his job.

Of course, UFC might be more hesitant to release him now that there’s Affliction. A Brock vs. Emilianenko fight would be huge, draw more interest than any other fight they have going, and even if (or more likely when) Fedor would steamroll over Brock, it would still be seen as a huge fight. Releasing Brock would basically be giving him to Affliction and that’s a bad thing.

On the other hand, there’s also EliteXC and CBS (if they keep things going after the dismal ratings for the Lawler-Smith show) and they’d love to get their hands on Brock and could use him to draw good ratings for several matches, not the least of which would be a battle with Kimbo Slice (and the only way you put Slice up against anyone like Brock is if you know they can draw with them instead of relying on Kimbo).

Brock is right up there with big names as a draw and we’re going ot have to wait to see what he does and what it sets us up for.

I’m off to Denver for WorldCon, so there won’t be any Falls next week, but keep an eye open because I might just be able to send a special something out!

Chris Garcia