The following story was published here at MMATorch.com ten years ago this week, on Aug. 20, 2016 regarding Brock Lesnar’s entrance into the world of professional MMA fighting…
Brock Lesnar has signed with Japan’s K-1 HERO’s promotion and will debut in October. His opponent has yet to be named. He is training in Iowa with Pat Miletich and his camp.
Lesnar left WWE after his heart wasn’t in it anymore, and he had an itch to try out for an NFL team. He failed to make the cut on the Minnesota Vikings and never played in a regular season game. He was involved in a lawsuit with WWE which prevented him from wrestling or fighting for anyone until 2010. A settlement was reached between the two sides earlier this year allowing Lesnar certain options to work at least in MMA in some capacity.
KELLER’S ANALYSIS: Lesnar is a standout athlete and has legit credentials in amateur wrestling as an NCAA Champion. Whether he can take a punch or adapt to throwing punches effectively remains to be seen. He was praised in the Minnesota Vikings camp as an incredibly hard worker who learned quickly, but he was just too far behind the curve at his age to progress to a legit NFL player before his athletic skills would begin to diminish with age. He was a very good pro wrestling performer and was good on the mic hyping his matches. If he is successful as a fighter – and they’ll take him slowly through relatively easy opponents as to milk his marketability and ease him into the MMA world – he’ll be a great asset for whichever promotion has him. He can hype a match and market himself well.
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