Brock Lesnar will return to the Octagon at UFC 200 in a July 9 bout against Mark Hunt, but steroid allegations have cropped up of late, including from Hunt himself.
Lesnar did his best to downplay the situation Thursday, saying in response to Hunt, per MMAFighting.com's Marc Raimondi, "I've been dealing with that my entire life. ... I'm a white boy, and I'm jacked—deal with it."
Fighters are typically required to give the UFC four months' notice before returning to competition so they can be regularly tested for drugs. Lesnar received an exemption from the testing period.
"I think he's juiced to the gills—and I still think I'm going to knock him out," Hunt said in his initial comments about Lesnar, per an interview with Fox Sports Australia. Hunt also said, "I don't think anyone should be exempt from testing. If they're trying to clean the sport up—mixed martial arts—this is a bad way to do it. I don't care who you are. It's ridiculous."
The 38-year-old Lesnar also downplayed how returning to the UFC would impact his status in professional wrestling as part of WWE, per Raimondi:
This isn't about my fans. This is about me living my life, being the person that I want to be. Granted, without the fans and everything, none of us would be able to do this. I get that. But I don't sit up at night wondering is my drawing power gonna be hurt or are my WWE fans gonna tune in and watch me do this. I don't give two s--ts about that. This is about me. I want to get in there and be an athlete again. That's what this is about.
WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon said this in an interview with Business Insider's Lara O'Reilly this week:
We are not supporting the fight necessarily but, again, it's not a competitor to us and the more that our superstars, that's how we refer to our talent, the more they do outside of WWE, the more awareness it generates and the broader the audience can be that is then brought back into our properties. So we recognize the value of that.
Lesnar said he didn't care about how a potential loss to Hunt at UFC 200 would impact his future WWE outlook, per Raimondi.
There's no denying Lesnar's star power has translated from WWE to the UFC in the past and vice versa. His presence and victory over Frank Mir at UFC 100 in 2009 drummed up plenty of interest and set the company's all-time pay-per-view record.
Lesnar has a 5-3 mixed martial arts record and at one point held and defended the UFC heavyweight championship belt. He lost his most recent two UFC appearances, with the last coming in December 2011 via TKO at UFC 141 to Alistair Overeem.
Given how much time he's been away from mixed martial arts, it would take an extraordinary effort for Lesnar to have a triumphant UFC comeback at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Hunt is exacerbating the negative attention on Lesnar as his impending opponent, but it may work to Lesnar's advantage if he can use it as motivational fuel. If any of the external noise is rattling Lesnar, he isn't showing it—and he's commendably dealt with the scrutiny and the spotlight before as a UFC champion.
