Lesnar – Who’s Next?
Published by Charles Jay on November 24th, 2008 in Current Events

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Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening

LESNAR – WHO’S NEXT?

After Brock Lesnar took apart Randy Couture last Saturday, I guess there’s just a natural question to be asked.

What is down the road for Lesnar? Is it Fedor Emilianenko?

Of course, first things are first. There is the matter of fighting the winner of the bout between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Frank Mir (Lesnar’s conqueror) that is scheduled to take place on December 27, in a fight that I suppose will determine the ultimate ultimate heavyweight champ. There is a great deal of marketability in anything Lesnar will do in the UFC, but if Mir emerges as the next challenger, that rematch will carry a little extra mustard with it.

But even with that angle, that isn’t the blockbuster pay-per-view that is going to bust any doors down. Who knows – maybe Fedor provides such a thing, now that he has had some exposure in the United States. He is considered by many to be the finest pound-for-pound fighter in the world today, and if not that, certainly the best heavyweight. He may be a bit advanced in terms of experience for Lesnar right now, but hey, if a guy is going to call himself a heavyweight champ, as Lesnar is, you pretty much have to ready to take on all comers, because if you are not, then what kind of champion are you?

The realization is that these guys aren’t just in this thing to determine who is best. This is a sport, like boxing, where any fight could be your last, so it makes sense to look for the big score. Emilianenko has been looking for some kind of opportunity to grab himself the big bucks, and I don’t know how bountiful those opportunities are going to be fighting the likes of the Tim Sykvias and Andrei Arlovskis of the world.

There has already been some posturing regarding this prospective fight and we’re going to talk about it some more in the next couple of days. But suffcie it to say that what Fedor’s probably going to have to do eventually is fight for the UFC, which has the biggest stage for him to perform on. The Affliction cards, despite the celebrity cache of Donald Trump and Oscar De La Hoya connected to them, don;t bring the same kind of “juice” as the UFC shows do. Let’s put it this way – something very dramatic would have to happen for that kind of platform to be created elsewhere.

And of course, there’s a lesson to be learned from boxing here. The “aficionado” crowd is often what is going to going to keep your promotion afloat in tough times, but that audience is not what is going to constitute the major box-office successes. It’s the crossover crowd that really does it.

Lesnar has that kind of appeal. He naturally is going to pull in that wrestling audience, a number that is considerable. After all, there is something inside each of them that wants to know what would happen if it were “for real”; i.e., not with an outcome that is pre-determined. But Lesnar has some mainstream appeal too; that is to say, he has enough of an ability to transcend wrestling AND mixed martial arts to where he’s going to pull in at least some casual fans. And that’s a good formula to start with.

To use some perspective, the way it used to be, all sports fans, where they followed it or not, could tell you who the heavyweight champion of the world was. Sadly, that’s not the case any more.

But Lesnar takes care of that problem for MMA and the UFC.

That’s quite an accomplishment for this “embryonic” sport, when you think about it,