There have been plenty of people slamming Brock’s actions over the last few days. Some have even claimed his actions were bad for mixed martial arts. Dave Meltzer says the criticism represents an unfair double standard:
What if the Lesnar and Dan Henderson fights and postfights on Saturday night were transposed? If Lesnar had thrown that totally legal but devastating second blow on an already knocked-out foe – and remarked in his interview that he was doing it to shut Mir’s mouth – people would have spent the past week demanding that he be banned from the sport. And would Henderson have gotten nearly Lesnar’s heat if he had pulled the same postfight antics as Lesnar?
I don’t think it’s arguable that the response would have been different. At the same time, Dan Henderson has built good will with the MMA fanbase for years, so it’s no surprise fans are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Meltzer also makes an argument very few have made: that by childishly booing Lesnar for being a pro wrestler, UFC fans made Lesnar a “heel” on their own:
When Lesnar stepped out of the dressing room for his first match with Mir in February 2008, no debuting fighter in UFC history was ever so heavily booed. At that point, he had done nothing to be judged on in his UFC career – except that in his two previous careers, as a college wrestler for the University of Minnesota and as a pro wrestler for World Wrestling Entertainment, he had risen to the top…
In round two, as Lesnar had Mir on the ground and was punching his face in less than 30 seconds before the fight was over, there was a loud chant aimed at referee Herb Dean of “stand them up.”
This was a first in UFC history. Not the chant itself, but it being done when a fighter was pummeling the other and actually seconds away from winning. It was the first time a crowd hated a fighter so much that they were willing to pervert the entire framework of what the sport is supposed to be – that a fighter should do what he can to finish a fight – simply because they wanted that fighter to lose so badly.
This is the strongest point he makes in the article. The fans booed Lesnar not because of anything he did, but because they wanted to see him humiliated. They hated him because he was a pro wrestler. Let’s recall it was Mir, not Lesnar, who was doing most of the pre-fight trash talking. Lesnar did his job, and the crowd hated him for it. Is it fair to hold those two years in the WWE against him? Fans can boo and cheer whoever they want, but when you boo the hell out of a guy who just beat Frank Mir in his fifth fight, don’t be surprised when he responds with a double bird.
It’s Friday and ESPN is still covering the Brock Lesnar story. Jim Rome covered the sport every day this week, and even had Forrest Griffin on today to talk about it. I think the idea that this is somehow a bad thing for the sport is very short-sighted. It would be a bad trend if a lot of people acted this way, but as Dave says in his article, almost every sport has its legendary villains. One of them is apparently on his way back to the UFC as we speak.
I am not suggesting that Brock should continue acting the way he did. I think he should really cool it now, but as an isolated event that got people to pay attention to a show that did an astronomical buyrate, it did nothing but help the sport.