Brock Lesnar was known far and wide as the real deal, but then came Wrestlemania XX. The Madison Square Garden crowd had learned that Lesnar would be leaving for the NFL, and booed and jeered for the entirety of the match. (To be fair, they were also booing his opponent, Bill Goldberg, for similar reasons.) The match went on, but it was easy to see how the crowd's indifference was leading to similar feelings from Lesnar. Lesnar's football career came and went quickly, but his MMA days are a whole other story. He lost his first UFC bout to Frank Mir, but quickly came back with wins over Mir, Randy Couture, and Heath Herring. A battle with diverticulitis and a loss to Alistair Overeem forced Lesnar to quit MMA, but his days in the ring were far from over. Lesnar's WWE return had an immediate impact, with an attack on John Cena at the end of Monday Night Raw. It was 2012, ten years after Lesnar's debut, and he had once again become the talk of the wrestling world. He may not be much of an entertainer, but he's still a hell of a wrestler.
Check out "The Champ" by my alter ego, Greg Forrest, in Heater #12, at http://fictionmagazines.com.
I used to do a mean Glenn Danzig impression. Now I just hang around and co-host The Workprint podcast at http://southboundcinema.com/.
