Taking place on Saturday, Feb. 2, UFC 81, which has been dubbed “Breaking Point,” will be an excellent warm up for the Super Bowl the following day.
The much-anticipated UFC debut of former WWE champion Brock Lesnar is finally here. It may not be the best card we see that night, but it is the one that will be most talked about leading up to the big day.
Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir - The biggest question about Lesnar is whether he can actually make the transition to MMA. He has fought just once, and it was for K1 against a late fill-in after his original opponent had to pull out because of an injury. He won in less than two minutes, but that proved nothing.
There is one thing that we can be sure of with Lesnar - he is a ridiculously good athlete. When he made his ill-advised bid to make the Minnesota Vikings after leaving the WWE in 2004 he put up some incredible performance stats for a guy his size - a 4.7 second 40-yard dash, a 35-inch vertical leap, and a 10-foot standing broad jump. His performances in the wrestling ring were consistently athletic beyond what is typical of heavyweights, and he was the 2000 NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion. In other words, his fighting skills might be questionable, but his athletic skills aren’t. It’s that that makes this debut so highly anticipated.
Lesnar doesn’t have a good track record for sticking with anything for the long term. He left the WWE when he was at the top after just three years in the organization. He said at that time that his dream was to play in the NFL, but he was undisciplined in training camp, skipped practices without permission when he was injured, and he refused an assignment to NFL Europe when the team said his skills needed improvement. If Lesnar truly wants to be a great MMA fighterhe can do it.
When it comes to a first opponent in the UFC, Lesnar certainly could have made it easier for himself. Frank Mir not only won the vacant UFC heavyweight title by beating Tim Sylvia, but he broke Sylvia’s arm with a vicious armbar in the process. We never got to see what he could do as champion, though, because a motorcycle accident cost him to miss 14 months of action and lose his title. He hasn’t been quite the same fighter since his return, with just two wins in four fights. On the plus side, he is a submission specialist that could cause a lot of trouble for Lesnar if he can get a hold of the wrestler. On the other hand, Mir has struggled with stamina, so he won’t likely be able to keep up with Lesnar if the match goes long.
I believe that the superior athleticism, size and power of Lesnar will come out on top.
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