Former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar (5-3; 4-3 UFC) takes a break from his once and current career as a professional wrestler to add some star power to UFC 200. Lesnar will face Mark Hunt (12-10-1; 7-4-1 UFC), the former K-1 kickboxing champion and UFC interim title challenger.
This promises to be a crackling matchup. For all his flaws as a fighter—more on that below—Lesnar has never ducked tough competition, while Hunt has fought a murderer's row of elite opponents since his days fighting in the Japanese Pride Fighting Championships a decade ago.
It's hard to know what to expect here. The former heavyweight champion hasn't fought in more than four years, and his last fight was an underwhelming first-round-knockout loss to Alistair Overeem.
Fourteen months before that, Lesnar lost his belt to Cain Velasquez in a shockingly thorough beatdown. His last defense of his title was a come-from-behind submission win over Shane Carwin in July 2010, while before that he had spent a year on the shelf battling the stomach ailment diverticulitis. Lesnar has never looked the same since his bout with the illness.
For his part, Hunt has gone up and down in the last several years. Junior dos Santos cracked his iron chin in May 2013, and since then Hunt has been finished twice, though it should be noted that those losses came at the hands of future heavyweight champions Fabricio Werdum and Stipe Miocic.
Hunt has won two in a row since that loss to Miocic in May 2015. He knocked out Antonio Silva last November and then did the same to former heavyweight champion Frank Mir in March this year, separating both men from consciousness inside the four-minute mark of the first round.
Let's break down each fighter in depth and then take a look at the particulars of the matchup, which is about as close as MMA in 2016 comes to a pure meeting of a wrestler and a striker.
Brock Lesnar
Record: 5-3; 2 KO, 2 SUB, 1 DEC
Height: 6'3"
Reach: 81"
Even at 38 years of age, Lesnar is a freakish and legitimately world-class athlete. Every piece of his game builds on his incredible size, speed, strength and power. His physical gifts and skills meld into an effective if limited whole.
Let's start with the good. Lesnar was a national champion in Division 1 wrestling at the University of Minnesota, and that skill set remains the locomotive that drives his approach in the cage. The South Dakota native shoots an almost impossibly explosive double-leg takedown and mixes in strong single-leg shots and knee taps as well.
Nobody will confuse Lesnar with a master of the intricacies of technical wrestling or its MMA-specific variations, such as using strikes or the fence to his advantage, but the former champion's strength makes him an authoritative finisher. When he puts his opponent on the mat, he feels the impact. Lesnar is also proficient at ducking under strikes to set up his takedowns and catching kicks.
While he's a beastly and effective wrestler, Lesnar does his best work on top. He's one of the most devastating ground strikers in the history of the sport, capable of generating incredible power in tight space, and he uses his size and strength with surprising technical acumen.
Half guard is Lesnar's wheelhouse. He likes to pin his opponent's head down using something like a modified quarter- or half-nelson hold (in wrestling terminology) while keeping all his weight on his opponent. This leaves one hand free for Lesnar to land a series of efficient but crushing punches to his opponent's face, all the while forcing his opponent to carry the former champion's weight.
This same position opens up Lesnar's favorite submission, the arm-triangle choke. Because he already has an arm wrapped around the head and the opponent is worried about the threat of his bucket-sized fists, Lesnar can quickly step over and tighten the choke.
Even if his opponent manages to get out from underneath him—a tall order—Lesnar is comfortable scrambling and mat wrestling until he can snag another takedown.
That's the positive of Lesnar's game. The negative side is everything else.
Lesnar is strong in the clinch, if not terribly technical there. He doesn't have great posture and doesn't fight for position, instead relying on raw horsepower to drive home a few sharp knees and uppercuts before hunting again for the takedown.
At range, the former champion is somewhere between barely serviceable and an utter disaster. He has legitimate power in his hands, and as long as he's bull-rushing his way forward, he can disguise his serious issues.
Footwork and confidence are Lesnar's biggest problems. He's either not moving at all or bouncing nervously on his feet, so the moment his opponent looks to push him backward, Lesnar doesn't know what to do. He can plant his feet and throw counters, but his subpar mechanics mean those punches don't land with as much force as they should.
The biggest issue is Lesnar's confidence. Don't listen to someone who tells you Lesnar can't take a shot; he can and has on numerous occasions, even from crushing punchers like Overeem and Carwin. The issue is whether Lesnar can immediately reply with offense of his own. If he can, Lesnar will eat shots with the best of them. If he can't, he crumbles, and he crumbles rapidly.
That doesn't make Lesnar a uniquely troubled fighter. MMA is full of front-runners who need to feel like they're winning. In his case, however, those lapses of confidence have happened on the biggest stages possible.
With all of this said, Lesnar has been out of action for more than four years. He's 38 years old and will turn 39 three days after UFC 200. How much of his freakish athleticism is left? Can he get into the kind of shape necessary to fight more than one round? Will he crumble if he can't immediately find success?
We won't know until the opening bell.
Mark Hunt
Record: 12-10-1; 9 KO, 3 DEC
Height: 5'10"
Reach: 72"
Where Lesnar is the credentialed wrestler, Hunt is the striker. Don't let his portly frame fool you: Like Lesnar, Hunt boasts freakish physical gifts in the form of monstrous power, shocking speed and one of the best chins in the history of combat sports.
At least, Hunt used to have those characteristics. As he has gotten older—the Super Samoan is now 42—some of his gifts have left him. His chin isn't as iron as it used to be, and his once-blazing speed is now merely above average. His power is still there, though, and unlike Lesnar, Hunt has compensated for his physical decline by becoming an ever-craftier technician.
That technical evolution shows itself in several ways. First, Hunt uses a hard and consistent jab to measure and set distance. Despite standing only 5'10", he fights long and doesn't put himself in danger by wading into the pocket to exchange punches. The jab allows him to do that. It scores points, shows Hunt where his opponent is in relation to him and stops his opponent from rushing in for takedowns.
Second, Hunt picks and chooses his power strikes carefully. The jab gives him enough volume to win rounds, but Hunt commits to left hooks, straight rights and uppercuts only on his terms. Those punches come most regularly as counters, when his opponents try to cover the distance he's enforced with his jab. Countering opponents who duck down to look for takedowns is a particular specialty.
When moving forward, Hunt mixes his shots between the body and head to confuse the opponent.
The Super Samoan's hands are still shockingly fast and powerful, and he excels at placing them on the chin or temple for maximum effect.
Finally, Hunt has evolved into an outstanding defensive wrestler. His low center of gravity makes it difficult to get in on his hips for a takedown, and his use of the jab to set the distance while circling and cutting angles stops many shots before they even happen. Especially early in the fight, Hunt is difficult to hold down and excels at exploding back to his feet.
On the down side, Hunt's cardio is perhaps not what it once was, and it grows harder for him to defend takedowns and get back to his feet as the fight wears on. He doesn't throw as many strikes as he used to, and active opponents can outscore him.
Betting Odds
Hunt -160, Lesnar +140
Prediction
This is a fascinating matchup, though not a particularly complex one. The basic dynamic is this: Lesnar has to get this to the ground, while Hunt has to keep it standing.
Hunt's not bad when he gets to top position, but wrestling with Lesnar is a recipe for wearing himself out and giving his opponent opportunities, so it's unlikely he'll try.
Those are the givens. Lesnar is a freakishly strong and fast wrestler; Hunt is a quick and technically sound striker with excellent takedown defense. Lesnar needs to feel like he's winning early in the fight, while Hunt is at his best, particularly at defending takedowns, in the first round.
On that basis, the matchup favors Hunt, though not by much. It's easy to see a scenario in which Lesnar bull-rushes Hunt out of the gate, gets on top and pounds him into bloody pulp inside two minutes. Hunt's takedown defense isn't impenetrable, and Lesnar is worlds beyond anyone Hunt has ever fought as a physical specimen.
It's more likely, though, that Hunt uses his jab to keep the gun-shy Lesnar at distance and then picks him off with slick counters, especially the uppercut. Even if Lesnar gets him down, Hunt isn't easy to hold on the mat. Moreover, it's an open question as to whether Lesnar's fragile confidence could deal with taking Hunt down only to see him pop right back up.
The pick is Hunt by knockout late in the first round.
