8 Implications Of Brock Lesnar Returning To UFC

The UFC’s heavyweight division has historically been the shallowest talent pool in the company. For a multitude of reasons, larger athletes tend to forgo MMA for other sports, leaving promoters with a handful of top HW stars propped up by dozens of mediocre sluggers.

Stipe Miocic, the current UFC Heavyweight Champion, is one of the company’s most skilled fighters. Beneath him, guys like Alistair Overeem, Fabricio Werdum, and Junior dos Santos are outstanding on their day, but deeply flawed. The rankings are crippled further by the absences of the injured Cain Velasquez, and Josh Barnett and Ben Rothwell, both of whom are currently serving anti-doping suspensions.

The weight class desperately needs depth, and Lesnar’s return would open up all kinds of fresh booking opportunities. The UFC could put him in the cage with a rising star like Francis Ngannou, book him and Hunt in a potentially huge grudge match (depending on Hunt's approval, of course), or even throw him straight into the title picture, though his stand-up deficiencies suggest he wouldn’t fare well. Either way, ‘The Beast’ would help blow away the HW scene’s long standing stagnation, and make it feel like a genuinely attractive division again.