Well, I was wrong about the Brock Lesnar-Frank Mir fight.
Not about the outcome; I correctly picked Lesnar to win, thank you very much.
No, I was wrong about the pre-fight war of words being mere gamesmanship and that we’d see a display of sportsmanship after it was over. Alas, there was no handshake from Lesnar, let alone an embrace. No kind words for his opponent. Instead he went straight up to the clear crowd favourite and said something none too kind.
And he had a few other things to say. You may have caught them.
I got back from Vegas on Monday to discover that one thing is dominating the MMA talk in Canada just as much as it was there. No surprise, it's Lesnar antics, which has overshadowed and almost spoiled what was a momentous occasion -- not too mention a pretty darn good night of fights.
For those who have been following my blog for a while and/or reading my rankings, you’ll know I’m not a huge fan of Lesnar. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what it means to transition from the WWE, which is strictly entertainment, to a true sport, which involves, um, sportsmanship. I was hoping and expecting he would have got to that point by now, but looking back to his behaviour after beating Heath Herring, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
He is good at that entertainment thing, I’ll give him that. First, in the cage. His performance was impressive. It wasn’t just his fists doing the talking, either. He truly demonstrated how well he’s picking up the sport of MMA. He was able to properly position his body when he lay on top of Mir to both avoid submission attempts from his crafty nemesis as well as make it extremely difficult for his opponent to get out of danger.
Secondly, his post-victory speech was definitely worth a chuckle or two. I thought the Coors Light line was funny actually. (Though I wouldn’t if I were a Bud Light executive.) And the whole thing about “getting on top of” his wife later was one of those “did he really just say that?” moments.
But he made two major mistakes in my books. One, the double middle-finger job he gave the crowd. As bad as Sean Avery is, could you imagine the forward for the NHL’s New York Rangers flipping the bird to the crowd at say, the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia? I’m not talking after getting booed for something bad he did. I’m talking after a win!
The second error in judgment (outside of pissing off one of your chief sponsors) was the “horseshoe” line. While it might be witty, it is not what you say after you’ve just turned your opponent’s face into a tomato. Not to mention the whole belief that Mir has been lucky for the past year makes no sense:
So, Brock, you’re saying Frank was lucky because you made the mistake in your first meeting of committing a foul which resulted in the bout being stopped?
Or because you made the mistake of leaving yourself vulnerable to a submission?
Or because he did what a veteran is supposed to do in that instance, which is capitalizing on the mistake?
Or because he did what nobody had ever done before in his next match, stopping Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira?
Mir deserved every bit of the interim heavyweight title he held. Just as Lesnar deserves every bit of the undisputed heavyweight championship title he still holds after avoiding his previous mistakes.
But it’s going to take a real change in attitude for him to deserve the title of one of the classiest champions in UFC history.
Brock, you may have beaten Randy Couture. But you need to learn to act more like him.
NOTES:
-- At the opening of the post-fight news conference, Lesnar got up walked over to Georges St. Pierre and they hugged. (Oh, so him you embrace.) I wonder if that was his way of apologizing for taking overshadowing his fellow champion's win too. GSP just keeps amazing us each time out. I mean, he tore his abductor in the third round yet looked just as good in the latter stages that you couldn't even tell! This is comparable to Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open on a torn knee.
-- Before anyone asks, "How could you have picked Lesnar to win when you had Mir ranked ahead him?", I still thought Mir was the better all-around fighter. But on this particular night, I just felt Lesnar was well prepared and had the edge and was going to pull it out. And winning so dominantly, they swap spots in the new rankings.
-- Also, no more suggesting I’m too Canadian-biased. I picked Dong Hyun Kim to beat T.J. Grant, didn’t I? And I was right about that too.
-- But I was very wrong in picking Michael Bisping, who got completely clocked by Dan Henderson. And incidentally, what Hendo said about taking the extra shot to the head of his already unconscious opponent “to shut him up a bit” was a joke, at least that’s what he told White afterward. Not a very good one, but the fact is, out or not, you have to keep going until the referee stops the action or you risk losing the opportunity to finish it.
-- Since I’m on the topic of things I was wrong about, I need to take back what I said about not expecting the UFC to ever sign Mirko (Cro Cop) Filipovic again. Dana White clarified what happened with Cro Cop, saying the Croatian heavyweight never reneged on a verbal agreement they had and that it was a Japanese promoter who put out a false statement that he had signed a multiple-fight deal with rival overseas promotion Dream. White had some choice words for the way the fight game is handled in Japan. He also said Filipovic called him and assured him he planned to honour his commitment, eventually signing a three-fight deal last week.
