Don’t expect Brock Lesnar back in the UFC.
The former UFC heavyweight champion and current WWE star doesn’t have anything more to prove in MMA, his close friend Paul Heyman tells MMAJunkie.com. Lesnar attended UFC 146 in May and UFC president Dana White said he could “possibly” return at the time. But a subsequent meeting “could not have gone worse,” according to White.
“I think Dana White would love to have Brock Lesnar back,” Heyman, who is Lesnar’s on-air WWE spokesperson and also the co-author of his autobiography, told the site. “I think [UFC CEO] Lorenzo Fertitta would love to have Brock Lesnar back. Does Brock Lesnar want to go back? I don’t think Brock has anything to prove in the UFC anymore. He’s 35 years old. He made a lot of money in the UFC.”
The UFC also made a lot of money on him. Lesnar has been in the main event of four of the company’s top 10 shows in terms of pay-per-view buyrate. Now, he’s headlining WWE cards again like he did before coming to the UFC in 2008. He wrestled Triple H in the SummerSlam main event last month.
“His house and his farms and his cars and everything that he owns is paid for,” Heyman said. “Why would he go in and risk injury and concussions and risk any kind of physical damage when he doesn’t need to? That’s the thing you have to understand. How hungry can a fighter be when he has millions and millions of dollars in the bank? What’s there for him to gain? Another run as UFC heavyweight champion? Why would he do that?”
Lesnar’s UFC record stands at just 5-3, but all eight fights came against the elite heavyweights in the sport and the early ones were when the freakishly athletic big man was very inexperienced. There were also two bouts of diverticulitis during his UFC stint where he couldn’t train for months at a time.
All of that really makes you wonder what would have happened if Lesnar had started in MMA right out of college, where he won a national championship in wrestling at Minnesota in 2000, and never got sick. We’d likely be talking about him as the best fighter of all time right now.
“You saw the speed, the size and improvement in every fight, and then this disease took everything away from him,” Heyman said. “You can see just how fragile an athlete’s life is and why athletes need to make so much money as fast as they can and never say, ‘I have 15 years on the contract.’ Because they don’t have 15 years on the contract. You have today on the contract because if you get injured today, tomorrow ain’t gonna happen.”