Explaining why Brock Lesnar is UFC’s top ace
Published by Zach Arnold on August 6th, 2009 in Current Events

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There are very few people who can match wits and vocabulary in professional wrestling when it comes to Jim Cornette, the legendary pro-wrestling manager of The Midnight Express tag team. Cornette is a brilliant mind and even more brilliant as a talker. When it comes to wrestling-style common sense, Jim Cornette tells it like it is. Recently in an audio commentary he did for Who’s Slamming Who on the Pod-o-matic online service, Cornette explained to listeners why he thought UFC 100 was the PPV of the year. During his commentary, Cornette explained to people inside of wrestling who don’t follow UFC why UFC is taking away pro-wrestling fans and why Brock Lesnar is the #1 star in the entire world of combat sports.

Cornette has a unique perspective on Lesnar, given that he helped smartened Lesnar up in Ohio Valley Wrestling when OVW was a WWE developmental territory several years ago. Jim Cornette knows what Brock Lesnar is like and what makes him tick.

During his audio commentary in late July, Cornette explained to his listening audience why Lesnar has become such a quick success in the world of MMA.

“First of all, Brock Lesnar. I’m not going to stand here and rave about him, how great he was because we’re personal friends because he even though he trained here in OVW (Ohio Valley Wrestling), we’re not actually personal friends. I always thought that Brock was holding back in developmental, I didn’t think he gave his best effort even though he was getting paid 250 grand a year to train, I didn’t think Brock had a lot of personality, I was wrong about that, I was right in the context of pro-wrestling but I was wrong he didn’t have personality. I always thought Brock Lesnar had a number of character flaws, one of which being you know he’s the big farm boy, right? The big meat-headed farm boy you know, woodsman, hunter, he’s a hunter. He likes to go out in the woods and ambush, slaughter, and murder animals. To me, anybody that does that has a major psychological flaw. There’s something wrong with them. There’s something wrong with your character if you get a kick out of going out in the woods and murdering innocent animals. If they’re attacking you, if its a bear or a coyote or a wolf or its one of these trained Chimpanzees that used to star on TV shows and now it’s ripping your face off, yeah! Shoot it! But if it’s just a deer or some other little woodland creature roaming around in the woods and you go out and you slaughter it, you murder it just to prove how big your dick is, you got a serious psychological flaw you need to get counseling, but I digress.”

So, according to Cornette, we’ve established that Lesnar is a psychopath who got bored with wrestling and decided that he could be himself and not have to pretend to be something that he isn’t by fighting in the UFC.

“Brock Lesnar is the hottest heel in the entire world of combat sports for a number of reasons. Number one, he’s huge. He’s powerful. He’s a big meat-headed farm boy that just happened to be born a genetic freak and he uses that size and that power and that God-given gifts… heh heh… God-given… to murder people! To slaughter people! To push them around, that’s the very definition of a heel! Then he gets up in the guy’s face that he just pounded into dust and he laughs at him and he trash talks him. Then he gives the finger to the fans and he cuts a promo, he cuts a promo knocking even his own promoter and their sponsor while the people are booing and he’s loving it. That is the very definition of a heel. You can’t get any heeler than that.

On top of that, all the MMA fans they hate him because he’s a fake pro-wrestler that’s come into their world and he’s beating up and dominating all of their heroes. Imagine that! A big, tough, strong, mean bad guy dominating the heroes, pushing them around, beating them up and then trash-talking ‘em and laughing about it. There’s the definition of a heel. And you can tell that he means it.

We used to call him Block Lesnar here in OVW for block-head, not in front of him now, behind his back everybody did, but still, he’s the very definition of a heel. He gets heat wherever he goes. He didn’t have that personality in pro-wrestling because he wasn’t comfortable in pro-wrestling because he can’t act that way, he just is that way. You saw the natural Brock Lesnar come out. I thought it was the greatest moneymaking performance and you know what helped? On a card where all the fights were good, his was the crummiest, shittiest fight of the night! He laid on Mir and pounded into insensibility, there was very little action, there was no excitement, the people hated everything he did, so on top of being an ultimate heel, he had a crummy match and still beat the guy that they were cheering for. So they have no reason to like him on any grounds and Dana White, if he’s smart which he’s proven so far that he is very smart, he has a multi-million dollar commodity just sitting there on his roster and sooner or later when some babyface, because anybody that fights Brock is going to be a babyface unless they drag Bin Laden out of a cave, whoever beats him eventually is going to be the biggest babyface in the history of the UFC.”

With UFC scrambling to increase the depth of their heavyweight division in order to develop new challengers for Brock Lesnar, who does Cornette think Lesnar should face next?

“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. They can line ‘em up and make the bum-of-the-month club, they can do anything because he is going to draw from the MMA fan community to see him get beat, he’s going to draw from the pro-wrestling fan community because they know who he is, and he’s going to draw from the mainstream community because look at him! He’s huge, he’s powerful, he looks like the epitome of a Mixed Martial Arts ultimate fighter. So what they’ve lucked into by sheer serendipity is the biggest money attraction in all of combat sports and now they can just sit there and count the money.

Meanwhile, in pro-wrestling, where the feuds have become so choreographed and contrived and the personalities over-produced and over-written and not allowed to be themselves, nobody believes anything so therefore the heels can’t get any heat and it doesn’t matter that UFC is real and wrestling isn’t. It’s the perception of what’s real, as Vince McMahon says, “Perception is reality,” well he’s gotten beat at his own game because the people now perceive Brock Lesnar as not only the toughest guy in the world but the biggest asshole, they’re right on both counts and he’s going to make a fortune.”