Brock Lesnar: 10 Things You Might Not Know About the UFC Superstar

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TweetBrock Lesnar is the former UFC Heavyweight Champion who set the mixed martial arts world on fire with his tremendous rise to the top of the world rankings.

Few would have ever expected that the man who lost his first UFC fight to Frank Mir in 2008 would now be a coach on The Ultimate Fighter just three years later.

But Lesnar’s life and career go a lot deeper than just his run with the world’s biggest mixed martial arts company. The strides he has made both professionally and personally have helped mold him into both the athlete and the man that he is today.

Here are 10 things that you might not know about the UFC superstar!

1. Lesnar’s quick rise to the top of the world of mixed martial arts may be matched only by his rise to the top as a pro wrestler.

WWE fans will always remember Brock Lesnar’s run as “The Next Big Thing” as he became the youngest world champion in the company’s history at just 25 years old.

In June 2002, Lesnar defeated Rob Van Dam in the finals of the King of the Ring tournament, thereby earning himself a shot at the WWE Undisputed Championship at SummerSlam.

Lesnar went on to defeat The Rock at SummerSlam that year, winning the match in clean fashion, which is a very rare feat for a heel (bad guy) to do over the company’s top face (good guy).
By defeating The Rock, Lesnar also took The Rock’s crown as the company’s previous youngest champion in history.

2. Paul Heyman is known both as the mind behind Extreme Championship Wrestling, as well as one of the most colorful managers in pro wrestling history.

When Brock Lesnar broke into the WWE, he had very little experience in talking and, quite frankly, needed some help to connect with the crowd.

Enter Paul Heyman.

Acting as Lesnar’s manager, Heyman was Lesnar’s talking piece, but also helped him win some matches by cheating.

Heyman was only Lesnar’s on-screen manager and had no real control over his career at the time, but the two spent so much time together that they developed a real relationship outside the ring as friends.

They remain very good friends today and their families stay connected more than Lesnar has with anyone else that he met in pro wrestling.

3. Brock has numerous tattoos all over his body. The two most substantial tattoos are the stylized skull on the center of his back and the massive sword on the front of his chest. He also has tattoos on his upper arms.

Many jokes have been made about the sword on his chest resembling a “certain part” of the male anatomy, but rumors are that Lesnar does not take that discussion very lightly and has flipped out at reporters and training partners about it in the past.
Given a guy of Lesnar’s size and his obvious ability to destroy 99.9 percent of the humans on the planet, it’s amazing that reporters have been so gutsy about calling out his tattoo.


4. One person who Brock certainly became close to from his days in the pro wrestling world is his current wife and former WWE diva, Rena “Sable” Mero.

Mero began working with the WWE in 1996 with her then-husband, Marc Mero. It wasn’t long before Rena had fans of her own and quickly surpassed the popularity of her husband, prompting the WWE to split the two of them on screen.

Rena divorced Marc in 2004 and began dating Lesnar shortly thereafter. The two were engaged by the end of the year.

The engagement was briefly called off in early 2005, but was back on in early 2006.

The two of them are now happily married and raising their children in Minnesota.

5. Brock Lesnar competed as a Division I college wrestler for the University of Minnesota in his junior and senior years from 1999-2000.

The two-time All-American was one finished his career with an astounding 106-5 career record, having been a two-time Big Ten Conference Champion while also winning the 2000 NCAA Heavyweight Championship.

But it was in his junior year that Lesnar may have faced his most difficult competition.

In the finals of the NCAA heavyweight tournament, Brock faced Cal State-Bakersfield’s Stephen Neal. Neal won a tightly contested match to become the champion, leaving Lesnar the runner-up.

Neal is now an offensive lineman for the New England Patriots NFL football team.

6. After leaving the WWE in 2004, Brock Lesnar decided to make a run at becoming a professional football player.
Lesnar told a Minnesota radio station that he had always wanted to play professional football and didn’t want to look back on his life and wonder what could have been.

Perhaps Lesnar saw what his fellow wrestling star Stephen Neal did when he transitioned from wrestling to football following his career at Cal State-Bakersfield.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as well for Lesnar as it has for Neal. He was one of the final cuts made by the Minnesota Vikings at the end of the 2004 training camp.


7. Lesnar didn’t make it as a member of the Vikings, but that didn’t mean his professional football career was necessarily over with yet.

Brock made some splashes in his his limited NFL pre-season work while achieving an unprecedented response from the local fans in attendance.

A person as big, strong, and athletic as Lesnar could certainly be of some use to a coach somewhere, but he needed to develop his talents and become a bit more refined in his techniques.

Like many other perceived-to-be raw talents, Lesnar was given a chance to play in the NFL Europa league. He decided to decline the offer, though, citing that he wanted to live close to home and be with his family.

This was the end of Lesnar’s attempt to play football, but even the minor success he did have shows what kind of an overall athlete he is.

8. The scariest moments in Brock Lesnar’s life had to be during his battle with diverticulitis.

In October 2009, it was announced that Lesnar had been pulled off of the UFC 106 card where he was scheduled to face Shane Carwin for the UFC Heavyweight Championship, due to illness.
There was very little released about the illness, with Dana White only adding that this was the kind of thing that would keep Lesnar out awhile. There was even concern that he may never step back into the cage.

With Lesnar out, the UFC setup an interim title fight between Carwin and Frank Mir, a battle which Carwin won by knockout.

We later found out that Lesnar had been suffering from both mononucleosis as well as diverticulitis, a rare intestinal disorder which would require surgery.
Lesnar underwent surgery to close a cut in his intestine that had been leaking waste into his abdomen, causing tremendous pain and the mononucleosis.

After being told by the doctors that he would likely need over a year to recover, Lesnar made his UFC return at UFC 116, where he defeated Shane Carwin in his first title defense.

Lesnar credits American doctors and surgeons with his life and specifically notes that the health care he received under Canada’s universal health care system, was “Third World treatment.”

9. When Brock Lesnar was released from his contract with the WWE, part of the agreement he signed was that he would have a no-compete clause.
This meant that while he was free to try out for the NFL or compete in other sports, Lesnar was specifically not permitted to work for any other sports entertainment (pro wrestling) or mixed martial arts company.

Going against the rules of the agreement, Lesnar appeared at a New Japan Pro Wrestling’s show in 2004.

The WWE went after Lesnar for damages, claiming that he breached the agreement and that he was not permitted to work any more shows for the company.

The two sides later dropped the case and began working on a new agreement. The WWE offered Lesnar a contract, but reported on their official website in August 2005 that he had declined the offer and would not be returning.

10. Brock Lesnar has always been a very large and powerful person, but speculation remains that he may have achieved his now monumental physique by way of more than just hard work and dedication in the weight room.

In January 2001, when Lesnar was just just 23 years old, he was arrested for receiving large amounts of what was alleged to be steroids.

The charges were later dropped when it was learned that the substances he was receiving were in fact legal growth hormones. His lawyer described the hormones as a “vitamin type of thing.”

To this day, however, many do not believe that simple legal growth hormones were enough to build Lesnar up to the monster he is today.

The subject also remains very touchy for Lesnar himself, who has snapped at reporters who have asked him questions about steroid use.

We may never know if Brock used steroids to bulk up in the first place, but we do now know that he is no longer using steroids, given his squeaky clean drug tests in the UFC.

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