In Defense of Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar may be seen as many different things in the wake of his victory of his UFC 100 victory, and subsequent avian exhibition in the octagon.
But he cannot be called stupid. For an athlete to flip off fans is nothing new; for a former WWE entertainer, the heel turn is probably more predictable than it is dismaying. And class, in a sport that appeals to a young male demographic unaware or unworried about its figurehead’s ugly statements, is overrated.
In fact, Lesnar as a villain, and a spiteful one, is probably better from a storyline perspective than any other outcome of this match against Frank Mir. Though I don’t know much about MMA and the UFC, I know that Fedor Emilianenko is lying in wait for challengers to his pound-for-pound greatness, and I know that there’s a respect for his skill that makes him more white knight than Lesnar could ever have been.
And in a society that loves sharp contrasts, having two heroes is just a messy proposition: Lesnar rallies the people who love his audacity to him and sends the rest scurrying to the other camp, but, moreover, he makes people care about who wins the next fight.
“That’s not going to win him any fans,” the talking head in the above video says. But for a sport that needs publicity rather than substance, having some of its centennial show discussed, even for sportsmanship, after this weekend is a victory.
And, unnecessary apology be damned, Brock Lesnar delivered that. (SI’s Arash Markazi concurs.)
Also, this happened:
I’m sure that Dan Henderson’s two-punch destruction of Michael Bisping gets the Ed Hardy-clad masses happy; I’ll cop to loving that first knockout punch, but the second one makes me shake my head.
Then again, I wouldn’t be one of the guys joining him later for drinks.
Henderson is kind of a cunt I guess. I probably wouldn’t say it to his face, but from where I’m at I think it’s an appropriate statement.
At least you watched the highlights. Did you see that pathetic “recap” over at the old home? The worst kind of “blogger in a basement” crap.
Also, I don’t blame Henderson as much for the last punch. It looked like he decided to throw before seeing Bisping out, and finally saw him out in the middle of throwing the punch.
Yeah. And I also read the stuff I could online and followed the rest via Twitter. Neither here nor there, though.
And re: the punch: Come on, that was low. He didn’t know for maybe the first split-second of that punch, but he had to re-aim it because Bisping was falling. There’s a ton of time to recalculate or pull back, in my mind.
Not to pull out an old favorite, but have you done any martial arts/combat sports? I haven’t, and I’m not sure that in that emotional/adrenalized state, it’s reasonable to expect Henderson to back off in the time he had (especially since, as he mentioned, the ref hadn’t stopped him yet). I’m certainly not sure it was a ton of time, and I’m not sure that he had to re-aim it so much that it made a difference.
If you’ve seen the press conference, you saw that Henderson really couldn’t remember how he set up the punch (with a left jab, or something else). He had to be reminded that it was a kick/feint. His answers to those questions indicate, to me, that he was running on reflexes to a very large degree.
I guess that’s fair; I haven’t fought anything bigger than a mosquito since my brother and I were younger, and there was never a scenario like that. I still think there was malicious intent that went beyond trying to finish the fight, but it was probably unavoidable once he went to finish it.
I don’t think he knew Bisping was out, though.
I don’t know about the Henderson thing. He said that he wasn’t that type fighter to do that, but he was wanting to shut him up?
These guys coached against each other in the latest season of The Ultimate Fighter, and Bisping was a complete ass the entire time. He was talking shit to Henderson and Henderson’s fighters the entire time they did the show.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, I’m not saying Henderson was right, but I understand.