What Happens if Brock Never Contracts Diverticulitis?

[hbombbisping]

His career would have likely been the same. None of the things you talked about have anything to do with his inability to respond well to getting hit/hurt. Overeem shits in him and so does cain. He also didn't have great hands. The biggest what if is had he learn to box when he was younger.

Again, shelling up when getting punched is a noob thing.

The better question is how fucked would the HW division would be if this version of Brock started training MMA fresh out of college.

 

[italiamusica]

I'm not even the biggest fan of Brock, but if he never had his illness and surgery, he probably would have stuck around a while longer and been more challenging in his fights.

 

[TheGreenMachine]

Lesnar's career was pretty inflated based on how he knocked down Health Herring in this fight. You take away this highlight and Brock's career pretty much falls apart since a lot of his post Herring wins were a mix of perfect matchups and luck. Also consider Brock's first win in MMA was Kim Min-Soo, who finished his MMA career with a record of 3-7. I'm not saying his wins weren't legit, but lets look deeper at his and his opponent's records...

- After Heath Herring lost this UD to Lesnar, he would go on to lose to Amir Aliakbari and Satoshi Ishii and then retire. Prior to Lesnar, Herring had 8 MMA fights where he mixed wins and loses, going 4-4. He couldn't even put together a 2 fight win streak. You could argue Herring was a journeyman or washed sometime around 2004, 4 years before facing Lesnar.

- Brock legitimately beat Randy Couture, but he probably outweighed him by 60+ lbs and had the perfect stylistic matchup against him (another wrestler who didn't have true KO power and would clinch).

- Mir was probably Brock's best win. This was also a very favorable stylistic matchup for him.

- Carwin should have never lost to Brock. Most ref's would have stopped that fight. If Carwin picked his shots, he would have eventually gotten the stoppage. Carwin was just a better all around fighter than Brock.

- Brock was never beating Cain or Ubereem stylistically, even pre-disease.

- Mark Hunt was probably the best stylistic matchup Brock ever got. A pure striker with mediocre takedown defense.

You consider all that, JDS, Carwin (in a rematch), Cain, Ubereem, Ngannou, Stipe, Aspinall, Fedor, and a lot of recent HWs would probably beat Lesnar.

 

[DougieJones]

Lesnar's career was pretty inflated based on how he knocked down Health Herring in this fight. You take away this highlight and Brock's career pretty much falls apart since a lot of his post Herring wins were a mix of perfect matchups and luck.

"Heath Herring made Brock Lesnar"

 

[TheGreenMachine]

"Heath Herring made Brock Lesnar"

No lies detected. Like I said, most of Lesnar's career was a mix of perfect matchups and luck.

 

[dog y]

No idea, but I miss HWs. Even LHWs.
We once had an all HW card.
Nowadays 90% of most cards are midgets and worse.

 

[NoStoneUnturned]

We all know the deal with Brock, he didn't like getting punched in the face. Amazing athlete, but day in day out I don't think MMA was really his thing regardless of what he achieved.

 

[Koro_11]

Nothing happens, he still turns into a pussy as soon as he starts getting tagged.

 

[No Skill Gap]

Terrible striking. Didn't like getting hit, scared of being hit.

 

[SaltedVinegarfootstomps]

Great hypothetical. I think i sit somewhere between the sentiment expressed in the thread. Without the itis, i dont think he automatically shits on the entire division, but I dont think he'd have the same fall, either. A few things to consider: death clutch was, at the time at least, a fairly formidable gym. Sure, it existed only through Brock, but if he never gets sick, that camp would probably continue attracting attention and slowly growing and obviously Brock could continue to develop. His striking would probably remain serviceable, but his ability to understand movement and technique would at least help him avoid trading with genuine threats carelessly. Does his clinch game follow suit? Does he learn a few sneaky MMA trips and add them to the repertoire?

Personally, I think he'd win some and lose some-but it would be absolutely a better product overall with him present. He'd nonchalantly body jobers, go toe to toe with some behemoths, get deathstar'd every so often by some strikers and cut some fantastic promos the entire time. Brock hated getting hit, but he was a determined individual accustomed to pain and injury with the mentality that the show MUST always go on.

 

[Takes Two To Tango]

What happens if Brock was only 5'0" tall?

 

[markg171]

It's kinda crazy to me that to this day there are countless people who have somehow never noticed that what hurt Brock against Cain was body shots, not head shots. Like with Overeem.

Everybody knows the infamous break dancing sequence but just somehow never notices that Cain hits Brock with a punch to the chest and that's what causes him to spiral. Brock literally tries to grab his chest where he'd just got punched and it throws him off balance. Then when Cain follows up against the fence Brock covers up fine and fights back with his own punches like he has all fight when Cain punches his head, but then Cain throws a knee to the chest/chin that folds Brock over and puts him down for the finish.

Body shots finished Brock against Cain. Just like they did Overeem. Both of which happened after his diverculitis whereas prior to this he'd never displayed any weakness to them. I think you have to be at least honest with yourselves that it's a little odd that Brock suddenly had this particular weakness after his illness and that maybe it played a role. You can still think Cain and Overeem maybe aren't great matchups for Brock while wondering if maybe he doesn't lose in those particular ways if he hadn't ever gotten sick.

 

[HereticBD]

Everybody knows the infamous break dancing sequence but just somehow never notices that Cain hits Brock with a punch to the chest and that's what causes him to spiral.

Nah, watch it again. It is a little hard to tell, because it happens so quick, but Cain clipped him on the button when Lesnar went for a takedown. It was a short little shot to the chin on the inside. A chest shot didn't make him lose his footing. He was on queer street.

 

[markg171]

Nah, watch it again. It is a little hard to tell, because it happens so quick, but Cain clipped him on the button when Lesnar went for a takedown. It was a short little shot to the chin on the inside. A chest shot didn't make him lose his footing. He was on queer street.

Slow it down to 0.25x speed. 2:39 is very clearly a shot to Brock's left chest, not head, which is why then immediately afterwards at 2:40 he reaches for his chest first before trying to correct himself and stop falling and gets so off balance.

He also wasn't on queer street as like I said seconds later they're against the fence and Brock collar ties Cain and fires back with 2 big sledgehammers of uppercuts. He was still in the fight. Cain then knees him in the chest and Brock folds over and falls. It's also pretty noticeable that on the ground Brock's busy trying to curl his body into a ball, not just defend his head if he were really dealing with being mentally wobbly.

It was body shots that hurt Brock and led to that loss. The later final sequence does see Cain actually drop him with just a punch to the head, but that's after all this that came from the body shots taking Brock out of the fight.

 

[HereticBD]

Slow it down to 0.25x speed. 2:39 is very clearly a shot to Brock's left chest, not head

Nope. Clear as day. Left hand, jaw. I don't know what you're looking at.

Now, perhaps you're right on the final nails in his coffin being body shots, but that first one in that scrum connects on the jaw. A chest shot would not even phase a fighter(much less a beast like Brock), unless it was a kick straight to the heart or something. A little clip on the chest ain't gonna do shit.

 

[NoStoneUnturned]

Brock didn't like getting punched, anywhere, at all. He wanted to front run and demolish guys. I'm not saying he isn't tough and couldn't absorb some punishment (he did), but his reactions to getting tagged were some of the worst I've ever seen.