Source: National Ledger, AZ
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA — The mood in Las Vegas is anything but calm, because there is no calm before this storm. Only questions that will definitely be answered, one way or another, this Saturday Night at UFC 81: Breaking Point. Brock Lesnar, the NCAA Heavyweight Wrestling Champion (106-5) from the University of Minnesota who went on to become WWE’s Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, has decided to go back to his roots and fight for real.
This Saturday Night, Lesnar steps into the Octagon against former UFC Heavyweight Champion Frank Mir. It’s Lesnar’s UFC debut. He did have one MMA fight, against Kim Min-Soo at the Los Angeles Coliseum last summer for Japan’s K-1 promotion, and crushed the Korean Olympian in just over a minute.
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“They put a lot of time and effort into promoting this thing,” Lesnar said on the radio this morning in Vegas, “I’m gonna try to come in and make a huge impact in this sport … I was a 4-time All-American, NCAA Champion, Big Ten Champion … I only know one way, and that’s balls to the wall. Let’s get in there, see what we got. I’m in this for the long haul.”
The oddsmakers are betting on Lesnar. “He’s a 2-to-1 favorite,” commented Wrestling News Desk.com editor Matthew Cooper, whose site has provided the ultimate insider coverage of Lesnar’s UFC debut, “but he’s definitely an unknown commodity. If Mir can blast Lesnar on the chin, we’ll find out right away if Brock can muscle his way through Ultimate Fighting, or he’s just another guy with great credentials that couldn’t adapt to the new and evolving Cage Fighting sport.”
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Perhaps one of the reasons there is so much interest in this fight is exactly that unknown factor. “No one knows,” Cooper stated, “either he’s going to be unimpressive, and life in UFC will go back to normal, with Chuck Liddell fighting, Randy Couture’s fallout with Dana White, and Tito Ortiz’s relationship with Jenna Jameson dominating headlines … or Lesnar will become, as UFC Prexy Dana White stated on the commercials that ran on both WWE and TNA Wrestling programming this week, “the biggest star in all of Mixed Martial Arts.”
Not even Lesnar’s former WWE on-air manager and agent, legendary mouthpiece Paul Heyman could hype this fight better than it has been. This Saturday Night, February 2, Brock Lesnar will fight Frank Mir. The fight will take place inside the Octagon as the most publicized match of UFC 81: Breaking Point. What happens in Vegas will not stay in Vegas this Saturday night. As a matter of fact, it will determine the course that UFC will take as Lesnar attempts to become the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s “Next Big Thing.”
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