Lesnar’s UFC Debut Falls Short during UFC 81
By Brandt DeLorenzo on Feb 03, 2008
But did you really expect him to beat the guy someone who could exploit his biggest weakness? As I noted back on November 5th of last year, the UFC picked a bad opponent for their rising star. Noted for his ground and pound in MMA and his amateur wrestling skills back in college, Lesnar needed to go up against someone who would try to stand with him. Heath Herring, Cheick Kongo (who is actually up against the former in UFC 82), or even the big and boring Tim Sylvia.
Lesnar did, however, take Mir down early in the fight and land some heavy punches which left the former heavyweight champ dazed. I actually thought Lesnar had a chance to end the fight, but Mir was able to pull through and submit Lesnar with a kneebar. It was exactly what I expect – Lesnar came out swinging, but he left himself open after hastily attempting to ground and pound someone who wasn’t Moo Soo Kim.
Overall, I was impressed with Lesnar and I feel he has amazing potential if he could just slow himself down. It sounds weird, but it was almost like his punches were too quick. He didn’t take his time to pick Mir apart when he had the change. I can see Lesnar walking through many heavyweights if he can work developing a better MMA style if the near future.
I’m just hoping a lot of people didn’t drop a lot of money on Lesnar because of the betting odds. I also wish I would have bet on Mir’s submission win during the opening round.
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i dont think anyone can say that brock embarrassed himself. certainly he made a rookie mistake that the submission master, mir, capitalized on. having said that, still a somewhat impressive show of pure power and adreniline. if he can rein it in a bit and continue to learn in the way of mitigating submissions i can see him as a force to be reckoned with in the future
Brandt, I definitely agree with you on this one. I found the original choice of Frank Mir very strange, though I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, given that Mir has had some issues with his conditioning in the past.
I thought that the only way the UFC could have mad a stranger pick was if they had selected Nogueira, Gonzaga, Werdum or even Fabiano Scherner to fight Lesnar, as all four are sick bottomside grapplers.
Initially, I was hoping for Jeff Monson, because it would have been awesome to watch Lesnar get smashed by the guy who, in my opinion, has the best submission game in MMA (especially when he’s allowed to use the techniques that are barred at ADCC, like the can-opener he got DQ’d for against Pe De Pano), but that was not to be.
Still, I’m juiced that Mir made him realize that putting the gi on is really very necessary.