Good or bad for MMA? Your turn to talk!
By Curtis Clontz on Jul 12, 2009
It is time to get interactive. We want to know your thougths. What is your official opinion of the post fight antics of Brock Lesnar last night? Do you think it is bad for the sport? Does it turn away prospective viewers or will the WWE crowd be enough to make up for that loss?
Josh, Yael, and I will be talking about your comments and our opinions on the upcoming Podcast.
Filed Under: MMA
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Flipping off the crowd was bad but it’s not like they were showing him any respect either. However it was still disrespectful and he shouldn’t have done it.
The slamming of a Main Sponsor like Bud Light was just plain stupid.
I didn’t believe the articles that Mir was in his head but seeing how he reacted to the win and hearing him talk about it I believe now Mir was in his head. Not in the sense that it was going to effect his fighting but in the sense that it meant a great deal to him to win that fight.
If we don’t expect outbursts like this from time to time we are fooling ourselves. These guys are fighting in big fights that mean a lot to them not to mention for big money. I think the emotions of winning a very important fight to him led to the reaction. I think the boos bothered him a little bit so he ran with it and reverted back to his WWE days and he slipped into the heel persona.
After calming down he delivered what I believe was a sincere apology at the post-fight press conference and he apologized again on MMA Live.
Overall I think all the positives of Brock Lesnar far and I mean by far outweighs any of the negatives.
Everything that Brock did from top to bottom in that fight made me sick. He not only refused to touch gloves with Mir, but very deliberately turned his back on him. How counterproductive to promoting humility and sportsmanship can you get? What a piece of trash? Lesnar used his size to win a more technical match than I thought he was capable of, but still topped it off with a repulsive display of POST fight trash talking to an already bloody and broken Frank Mir, flipped off all of Mandalay Bay, and then trash talked the UFC’s sponsors. Who signs this a**holes paychecks? I guess I should feel bad for the guy since he only made a measly $3 million from the UFC. Whatever… I’ll never watch another UFC card with him in the lineup even if it is Fedor. Period.
For every person who says they will never watch another UFC card with Brock on it, there are 10-20 lining up to ask when Brock is fighting next and how much it will cost them.
Brock is amazing for the UFC. He’s amazing for the sport. He’s an amazing athlete with a ton of talent and he keeps getting better.
MMA elite fans always talk about how PRIDE was great and freak show fights are awesome. Here we have a “freak” of a man who can actually fight. I guess when the “freaks” are winning, it’s no longer entertaining.
What I see is a bunch of butthurt Randy fans who wanted to see Lesnar exposed and it didn’t happen. Lesnar is the real deal. At first I hated him, I saw what he did to Herring and thought it was ridiculous. Then I saw the comments Herring made before the fight and realized Herring got what he deserved. Mir got his and more, there’s nothing better than seeing a man run his mouth about how his opponent hits like a girl, and then seeing his face swell up like an old lady, beautiful.
After rewatching the end of the fight, I think Lesnar was so jacked up that when he saw Mir stumble he thought (as I did) that Mir was trying to get in his face. He reacted how a lot of guys would react. His post fight interview was brilliant, I loved every second of it. Trashing the sponsor was dumb, apologizing after was smart. He was pumped up.
Lesnar is great for the UFC. Any PPV he is on will do huge numbers. He’s worth his weight in gold.
And to anybody who says they won’t watch Lesnar vs Fedor out of principle, I call bullsh*t. Everybody who is hating on Lesnar now will pay to watch the #1 P4P fighter on the planet dismantle him. The only negative thing about a Brock/Fedor fight, is the number of Fedor huggers who will end their life when Brock ragdolls their hero.
Brock Lesnar is here to stay. And as a UFC and MMA fan, I’m ecstatic that he is.
Dale,
How long have you been an MMA fan?
I watched UFC 1 on VHS when I was 10-ish. I watched every UFC I could find on VHS until around UFC 24 when my local video store stopped bringing them in.
I started rewatching MMA right around TUF 1. Between that time, I was watching whatever fights/highlights I could find on Bearshare. I started watching the first season of TUF halfway through. Over the next 4 years I re-acquainted myself with MMA, bought every PRIDE event, jumped from message board to message board doing what I could to learn about the sport that I had once again fallen in love with.
You could say I’m a born again TUF-noob. I’m fine with that. As I said, I started out hating Brock just like most everybody else, I used to get upset with all the post-fight BS, I used to say, “pre-fight is just hype but you need to show class after the fight, blah blah blah blah blah.”
One day I just stopped caring. It was around the time I was called a troll by the legions of Randy nuthuggers for simply asking, “How on earth do you guys think Randy can beat Brock?” I wasn’t even a Brock fan at that point, I just didn’t see how everybody and their dog thought Randy was going to work Brock over. It wasn’t fathomable. I couldn’t fathom it.
Leading into the Brock/Randy fight I started to gain respect for him, watching him train, watching his work ethic, seeing how serious he was taking the title fight. Listening to legions and legions of the MMA elite complaining about how Brock didn’t deserve the title shot, how he didn’t deserve to be in the same cage as Randy, and after he won the fight and the title, the masses were still claiming that he wasn’t a real champ because he didn’t deserve to be in there in the first place. It gets tiring.
My above post smells troll-ish, and it is to some extent, taking my real opinion and pushing it to the extreme. Reading things like, “I won’t ever watch a card with Brock on it” sickens me. An MMA fan will snub 9 other fighters, because Brock Lesnar is fighting on the same card as them? It doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m not a wrestling fan, although occasionally I will watch WWE in hopes of seeing a Batista Bomb or two, but I don’t enjoy it.
I see it like this, Brock Lesnar is an intense individual who comes from a Sports Entertainment background. I will cut him a little slack on his post-fight antics. To be fair to Brock, you didn’t see any of this post-fight baloney when he lost to Mir the first time, or when he beat Min-Soo Kim (sp?), or when he beat Randy. Twice he’s gone over the top, and both times it was against a fighter who threw as much verbal diarrhea as humanly possible in his face leading into the fight.
The only thing I didn’t like was his comment about Bud Light, because it didn’t make sense. Shitting on the sponsors was funny, but pretty stupid. At the press conference, he apologized for going a little nuts and it seemed pretty genuine. He’s a big kid, and he has a lot of growing up to do, but as an MMA fan, I’m happy that I get to watch him grow.
Do I believe he can beat Fedor? Before last night the answer was no, but after seeing him toy with Mir on the ground, I definitely think he will be Fedor’s toughest test. Too big, too strong, and learning too fast. His post-fight antics could be toned down a little, but most of it is entertaining. We can’t all be St. Pierre or Fedor after the fight is over.
What was worse for the sport last night? Brock Lesnar going crazy after the biggest win of his career or Dan Henderson’s belly-flop elbow drop on an already brain damaged Michael Bisping? I enjoyed both, but I think that the potential damage Bisping could’ve sustained is far worse than anything Brock did.
I’m all for class and respect in the sport, but every once in awhile I don’t mind seeing somebody rub their win in. I will say this, Jamie Varner and BJ Penn rub me the wrong way with their post-fight victory shit, but that’s because it’s scripted. Varner’s little chicken dance and BJ Penn’s glove lick is annoying to me. The glove lick is funny, but still, scripted.
What we saw last night was Brock Lesnar stripped to the bone, I highly doubt he wrote or planned any of what he did, it was raw emotion and adrenaline that he was overcome with. Anybody who’s played any sport knows that emotion mixed with adrenaline can cause some really intense things to happen. We saw that from Brock, I expect that in the future, he will tone it down. I only hope he doesn’t tone it down too much, it’s enjoyable for me and it’s good for MMA.
People will be talking about this for months and months and months, it might even boost Affliction’s PPV buy rate as Dana was talking about a Brock vs Fedor fight at the press conference. Brock fans who only care about Brock and the UFC might be willing to shell out some change to see the man who Dana was talking about.
I do know this, Brock Lesnar sells tickets. He sells PPV’s. He sells MMA. He’s not a posterboy for the sport, and he never will be. But he is bringing in insane amounts of money and media coverage. I just don’t see how that could ever be considered a bad thing. If he crosses the line and beats an opponent/ref/judge/fan to death after a fight, I’d say he’s bad for the sport, but until then, anything he does is fine with me.
tl/dr. etc…
“Born again Tuf-noob” That’s awesome!
That is the glory of this site! Opinions all around. WHile I am not on the Brock Lesnar bandwagon (Jon Jones currently), I can not argue with a lot of what you have to say.
What I can do is talk about him in the upcoming podcast. Just like Machida, I don’t have to root for him, but he is the champ…
In the short term, Lesnar’s comments are unfortunate because they distract from what was an entertaining event for the UFC. In my opinion, this is probably the biggest negative of the whole ordeal. In the long term, I doubt they will do that much harm. From a business standpoint, the Bud Light slight was the most egregious but Lesnar has already apologized and probably been internally pressured never to repeat something like that again. If the question is: are Lesnar’s post-fight antics good or bad for MMA? The answer is bad because they’re a distraction. But if the question is: is Brock Lesnar good or bad for MMA? The answer has to be good because at the end of the day, he sells. It’s that simple.
Is Brock Lesnar’s post fight antics bad for MMA? Yes, dissing a major corporate sponsor like Budweiser is NOT a good look. That is all. playing the heel, flipping off the fans, lack of sportsmanship will have many media outlets talking for a while. All good.
I like the earlier comment, not everybody can be GSP or Fedor. We can’t expect emotionally adrenaline fueled combat fighters to behave the same way. Simple as that. Prior to Brock Lesnar’s entrance to MMA their have been many characters that have been more than bad sportsman. I think MMA should be fortunate that we have great ambassadors for the sport that are the example. Besides there’s nothing wrong with a little balance. Tito Ortiz?
It’s going to take Lesnar a little time to stop acting like a natural heel. He’s reverting back to his WWE style and, like it or not, 75% of those fans at UFC 100 enjoying his antics and only booed to get a rise out of him after he won.
I truly believe that Mir’s previous win really got to Lesnar’s head and Lesnar didn’t want to show any respect – I’m sure the guy has a ton of issues and hates losing more than anything.
He did win fair and square in this fight. There was no early stoppage, punches to the back of the head, or any other fouls. Fedor is an easy win if they fight, but everyone else is going to have a pretty hard time up against his power and strength.
Lesnar won’t beat Fedor, he didn’t beat Randy Couture the champ, he beat Randy Couture the washed up, hadn’t trained for a year and a half before that fight one. Mir, is overrate. Fedor, is definitely not overrated, he finds wholes in offense and makes you pay. You get on top and “work him”? You get arm-barred in a hearbeat (hong man choi). You get too confident when having a rythm? He just finds an opening and knocks your ass out(Arlovski). How about you suplex him into the ground headfirst, which would have exhausted and stunned most? He wins by submission in less then 5 seconds after… Put it this way, Fedor is 30-1, Brock 4-1, how about come back when Brock is say, 10-1, and he might be close to getting in the question.