I see this all the time in threads. Brock is green, Brock is a part time fighter, etc etc. I think most of this hate is simply because he was in WWE. Plenty of MMA fighters have been successful while not only holding a second job, but having less experience than Brock. To illustrate this point, I'll tell a little story. As you can guess from my join date, I've been around the game a long time.
The first time I saw Brock in person was at a power lifting competition in Iowa in 2006. The gym we used was also the home of Militech's gym. I got to talk to several fighters there including Matt Hughes and it was an awesome experience. Brock was all the talk and there were some pretty great stories. Mainly, that Brock got tapped out quite a bit his first few weeks, but was an absolute animal in the gym, and was already a handful after a month or so for everyone. And what gave him a HUGE advantage was that he was there every day, all day. Coupled with his already strong background in grappling, his ability to train full time, and his physical ability, the consensus from the folks I talked to that he would be unstoppable in 1 to 2 years time.
Flash forward 9 months, and I was back in Davenport for another lifting meet in late 2006. And guess what? Brock was still there, living in Iowa, and doing nothing but training. He left I believe shortly afterwards, but I was back at the Militech gym in 2008. Basically the word was he was constantly training grappling and submissions with Greg Nelson and other coaches back in Minnesota. Later on I learned is when he started Death Clutch.
Which brings me to my main point; people who have never trained don't realize how important it is to get a quantity of time in the gym. I've trained MT and BJJ for almost 15 years... but that is going to 1 hour classes 3-4 times a week. At that rate, I will never actually be elite at either. Brock has been in the position to train nearly full time, and has been doing it for nearly 10 years.
Yet if you listen to Shertards, Brock is a newbie. What they don't realize is that time in the Octagon is when you get to execute what you have learned, not a time to learn new things. Its time actually training that makes you a better MMA fighter. The consensus when Brock fought Carwin was that Brock was this somehow newb to MMA. when it was actually Carwin who treated MMA as a hobby, never trained full time, and his full time job was an engineer. Same thing with Miocic. Dude is a firefighter by trade and a part time fighter. Yet they don't get the hate Brock does, even though they if you actually measured time in training, it would pale to what Brock has put in.
