Brock Lesnar
Former heavyweight champ asks for face-to-face meeting with Dana White
LAS VEGAS – In a somewhat surprising appearance on Saturday, former UFC heavyweight champion and current WWE star Brock Lesnar showed up cageside to watch the UFC 146 main event heavyweight title fight between Junior dos Santos and Frank Mir. And the Internet instantly began buzzing, wondering why he was there.
Lesnar retired in December after a first-round TKO loss to Alistair Overeem at UFC 141. He then signed a deal to return to the WWE for a reported $5 million a year. And though his appearance in the VIP seats on Saturday may have been nothing more than a former champion being curious about a fight between a man he has split a pair of bouts with – Mir – and dos Santos, a man he coached opposite on Season 13 of “The Ultimate Fighter” and was scheduled to fight before diverticulitis took him out, UFC president Dana White alluded there could be more to it than that.
“He was here. That says it all,” White said at Saturday’s post-fight news conference. After the press event, White told a small group of reporters that Lesnar had contacted him saying he wanted to come to the fight, but asking for it to be kept quiet. And then he asked for a face-to-face meeting with the UFC boss after the fight.
“You never know,” White said. “He might want to come back, (or) he might just want to hang out.”
Typically averse to the topic of co-promotion, White didn’t rule out the possibility that he might allow Lesnar to remain in his pro wrestling obligations with the WWE while also making a return to the UFC. Asked about the recent news that former Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal was going to be a TNA Impact! wrestler while also fighting for Bellator, White said it takes a special type of fighter to manage both – but believes Lesnar could do it.
“I think he’s still one of the top guys in the heavyweight division,” White said. “Is he in the top five? I don’t know. We’ll see.”