Amadi's Take
AMADI: Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin gave each other a fight like no others could give them at UFC 116
Jul 4, 2010 - 6:30:48 PM AMADI: Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin gave each other a fight like no others could give them at UFC 116

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By: Jason Amadi, MMATorch Columnist

Brock Lesnar’s performance at UFC 116 solidifies him as the best heavyweight in the world in the eyes of everyone who isn’t a hardcore Fabricio Werdum fan. However, as there always seems to be in main event fights, there is a bit of backlash after the fight between Lesnar and Shane Carwin.

Brock Lesnar took a tremendous beating in the first round, showed ample heart and a solid chin, only to come back strong in the second and submit Carwin. The knock on the performance seems to be that Lesnar took such a beating in the first round, that Carwin was too gassed to continue, and this somehow makes Brock Lesnar’s victory hollow, or makes him appear very beatable.

This simply isn’t the case.

For years, even prior to this fight being announced, it was always believed that Shane Carwin was the biggest challenge Brock Lesnar would ever face. A high level wrestler who cuts to 265, and just happens to be the absolute heaviest hitter in mixed martial arts.

Lesnar took shots that no one else could survive, and rallied in the second round to finish his opponent by submission. The comical part is, Carwin steamrolled 12 men before meeting Lesnar, and Lesnar steamrolled everyone in his UFC run up until that point, so one has to wonder what these detractors thought this fight was going to look like.

The thing people need to understand about heavyweight MMA is that it isn’t very good, at least technically speaking. This may come as a shock to those that believed that Fedor Emelianenko was easily dispatching the very best fighters in the world, but heavyweights are on the very bottom in terms of technical proficiency.

Fedor himself is too wild and paid for that against Fabricio Werdum; Minotauro Nogueira blocks punches with his face, Shane Carwin’s gas tank at 285lbs is questionable, and Brock Lesnar has terrible striking and striking defense.

This isn’t fighter bashing, these are just facts that we all know going into heavyweight fights. Heavyweight fighters who get endless praise heaped onto them like Cain Velasquez are fairly untested. Velasquez has only had 2 fights against fighters who are considered middle of the pack heavyweights, and one against an elite, albeit punchy, former champion in Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. To his credit, he’s soundly defeated all of them in impressive fashion, but we did see him in trouble a few times against Cheick Kongo, and you have to wonder what Kongo would have done to him if he hadn’t taken that fight on two weeks’ notice, and if he had some semblance of takedown defense.

One way to look at the fight is that Carwin obliterated Lesnar in the first round before gassing in the second, getting taken down, and then finished. Another way to look at it is that Lesnar took vicious shots from the hardest hitting fighter in MMA and came out all smiles in the second round before stopping him.

While the actual fight between the two wasn’t pretty, there are few heavyweights that could ever give them the fight that they gave each other. Lesnar and Carwin are probably going to be on top of the heavyweight division for a very long time.

RELATED STORY: PENICK: Brock Lesnar's UFC 116 victory reminiscent of heavyweight legends Nogueira and Emelianenko: [CLICK TO READ FULL ARTICLE]