Brock Lesnar’s Performance Brings Out the Fickleness in MMA Fans

I think Lesnar is going to have problems with anyone who can stifle his wrestling. I think he’d have problems with Shane Carwin again, and I never see him putting it together against Velasquez. Other than those two guys, I think he has his way with the rest of the heavyweights in the UFC.

And you’re saying Anderson Silva can’t wrestle?!?! HOW DARE YOU SIR! Didn’t you see the switch he hit on Nate Marquardt? /sarcasm

Thanks bud.

I think Lesnar is a front runner. He’s a bit like Vitor Belfort, only his flaws are way more amplified. If he can go in there and control the fight and do what he wants, everything is hunky dory. When a fight starts getting really competitive, or worse yet isn’t going his way at all, he doesn’t like it very much. He has to be in control to be comfortable.

Luckilly for Lesnar, he’s in the heavyweight division. Even after all this, he’s still the second best wrestler in the division, which doesn’t have a lot of really strong wrestlers at the top of the division. I’d still pick him against someone like Junior Dos Santos or Roy Nelson, simply because he can take them down and keep them down. The chances of either guy landing a shot on the feet before the takedown and making Lesnar’s wheels fall off is a very, very real possibility though.

Lesnar will be back again, most likely against Frank Mir. That fight is pretty much tailor made for Lesnar. He’ll come in, beat up Mir in style, and everyone will love him again.

he was saved by the bell and got a break to recover his wind and thoughts.

Simply false. He worked it back to his feet at the end of the round, and kept it in the clinch against the cage plenty of time to prove that the bell had nothing to do with it. Did the round break help him? Almost certainly, but it also helped Carwin (to no avail, obviously).

He had actually ‘broken’ Carwin about four minutes into that fight. He just didn’t realize it until the second bell rang.

Other than that, great post. I think I agree with most of your points.

I find it interesting that the media members who were singing Lesnar’s praises from the roof tops 48 hours ago are now bashing Lesnar with a fury and singing Velasquez’s praises.

I think a lot of them were in love with Lesnar simply because he does great business for them. When Lesnar fights, web traffic goes through the roof for these sites. It’s hard to not support a guy who makes their business run smoothly.

Randy Couture is one of the greatest fighters to ever strap on the gloves, yet he has 10 losses in his career. Randy often says, “If losing a fight is the worst thing that ever happens to you, you’ve got it pretty easy in life.” It’s a competition out there and even the best fighters in the world lose here and there. There is zero shame in that. Cain Velasquez will lose one day. Anderson Silva will lose in the UFC, probably several times before he retires. GSP will probably get knocked out again one day. It’s all part of the game. Doesn’t mean they aren’t incredible fighters. It just means it’ll be their turn to walk in those shoes.

Also, props to you for taking up Muay Thai, even if it’s just for fun and fitness. Only positive things can come out of that.

I was seeing a lot the same people who were singing Lesnar’s praises one day and dismissing him the next. I read a lot of what fans write, and I know a lot of them by name. Their turn on Lesnar was incredible. He went from an unstoppable beast to a worthless bum in four minutes and twelve seconds.

Also, I’ve never seen anyone claim that the Forrest/Shogun fight would go the same way 100% of the time. Most of the fans seem to think Shogun would wipe his feet off on Forrest if they fought again. Then again, never underestimate the stupidy of fans. I watched the fights in a casino on Saturday, and the guy behind me was sold on Tito Ortiz fighting Nate Marquardt. He also thought Martin Kampmann had been KO’ed by Razor Rob. Your average fan hardly knows who is fighting who, let alone able to predict fights correctly.

People were actually MORE sold on Lesnar being an unbeatable monster after the Carwin fight. I remember telling some folks that night that I thought Cain Velasquez would run over Lesnar, and they scoffed at the notion. “Did you see what he took tonight? No one can get punished by Shane Carwin and come back like that. Velasquez will get dominated.” Even right up until the fight last Saturday, Lesnar supporters were sold on the Carwin fight being a great indication that Lesnar could take anything and come back to win.

Well, maybe people shouldn’t be sold on a guy with a 5-1 record being an unbeatable monster in the first place.

That last post may have came off as a bit dickish, just posting the link, it wasn’t meant that way, I just hit return by mistake.

MMA fans are fickle, it’s unfortunate but it’s just the way things are.

Oh no I completely agree that a lot of the MMA media were predicting a blow out in that fight, I was just saying that over at FLD we saw the fight being a lot closer than most, with the edge to Cain.

I think anyone who actually watched tape on both men would have easily seen that Lesnar was in a spot where he didn’t really have an avenue to win the fight, besides landing the greatest punch of his entire career on the feet. The thought that Lesnar was just going to take Velasquez down and hold him down simply because he was a D-1 champ and Velasquez was “only” a multiple time All America was laughable and just showed how little people know about wrestling. That’s like saying Leon Spinks was a better boxer than Ken Norton, because he won the belt and Ken didn’t.

What’s funny is that I would tell people I was picking Velasquez, and they’d act like I was crazy, or try to label me a Lesnar hater. They acted like Lesnar was the only sane pick in the fight. I literally had people telling me this the very night Lesnar looked completley out of his element against Carwin. They just watched Lesnar get his ass kicked, yet there was NO WAY Velasquez could beat him now. Puzzling, to say the least.

I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that this is still a very young sport, and people want to believe that it’s evolving at a faster rate than it actually is, leaving them jumping from fighter to fighter, hoping the next one will be the "new breed" of MMArtist.

I think it’s more that people want to be on the band wagon of a winner. It’s hard to be a fan of Forrest Griffin. You never know when he might get shellacked out there and look horrible. Being a fan of Anderson Silva (or until recently, Fedor) is easy – all they do is win. You don’t get your heart broken very often with those guys. I don’t follow stick and ball sports, but I’m sure there aren’t a whole lot of fans of a team that’s always just middle of the pack and loses as often as they win. It’s hard to get behind someone who loses a lot, as it’s bound to dissapoint you on some level. It’s easy to be a fan of a winner. People put too much of their emotions behind fighters. If their favorite fighter loses, it makes the fan feel like they lost as well.

IMO, people were way too high on Brock following the Carwin win, and too quick to dismiss the monstrous holes in his striking game (particularly his reaction to being hit) as unique to that matchup, due to Carwin’s power.

People were too sold on Carwin’s sick power being the reason why Lesnar fell apart out there. Obviously Velasquez doesn’t crack quite like Carwin does, but he’s still a very skilled heavyweight striker. If he hits you, it’s not going to feel good. The thought that Lesnar was just going to stand around and eat Velasquez’s punches because he had “pillow fists” might be even more puzzling than the thought that Lesnar was just going to wrestle Velasquez to death.

He’s still a dangerous fight for essentially anybody at HW, and he’s still top 5 in the division, rankings wise, but he needs to do an awful lot of sparring leading up to his next fight IMO. Make those $100k camps count.

Those private camps are the worst thing for Lesnar’s growth and development as a fighter. Remember, all his training partners are his employees, who are relying on Lesnar for a nice paycheck. Are they going to get in Lesnar’s face and try to beat him up? Of course not. You don’t want to make the boss look bad. I remember when Lesnar first started training, he went out to MFS and trained with Tim Sylvia and Ben Rothwell. Both of them said at the time that they would hit Lesnar and he’d just fall to peices. Instead of sticking in a camp like MFS where the guys are really going to push him and make him a better fighter at the end of the day, he made his own camp where he’s boss. That’s probably the worst mistake Lesnar ever made right there.