By Bruce Mitchell, PWTorch columnist

When pro wrestling matches are manipulated to maximum effect, they have consequences that change things for the fighters, the promotion, and fans alike.

That was never truer than at the main event for UFC 141 in Las Vegas last Friday night. Everything seemed fine when Brock Lesnar and his opponent Alistair Overeem did the typical glower at the weigh-in. Brock looked more like his WWE 12 video game counterpart than anyone in WWE, and Overeem?

Who cares where his urine sample went? Look at the guy. Vince McMahon must have wondered what fresh hell this was when his major competition was making millions off the dream match he envisioned thirty long years ago while he’s stuck with a Waffle House cook and some little virgin who doesn’t even own a TV as his world champions.

And then Brock Lesnar walked through the door of the Octagon.

You could see it in his eyes, in how he stood, that it was over. The bell ringing to start the fight only made things more pronounced. This was a Brock Lesnar no had ever seen, not in the NCAAs, not in World Wrestling Entertainment, not in a Minnesota Vikings training camp, and certainly not in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

This wasn’t the electric-win-or-lose Lesnar, who came on like a freight train at his opponent and the box office. This was a man who now knew the difference between looking huge and being a badass.

This was a man who had almost died since he began his short MMA career, who had had more than a foot of colon cut from his intestines during major surgery, who knew how he had really done during his closed training camp, and who looked across the Octagon at the likes of Alistair Overeem, the life-sized superhero who had won heavyweight championships across the entire spectrum of mixed martial arts.

The fight was done before it began. UFC lost an attraction and, perhaps, made one in its place.

It’s this tentative Lesnar, this ghost of the attraction who crushed WWE in head-to-head competition at the box-office, whose storyline isn’t going to be one of gutsy redemption after a life-threatening disease, but of a fake pro wrestler with no loyalty to the ones who made him and who wants special treatment after washing out somewhere else.

Sure, maybe in a year or so, Undertaker can use Lesnar to play WrestleMania MMA Fantasy Camp, if ’Taker is even around by then. It’s hard to figure how the ghost we saw in Las Vegas Friday night will be worth the price he’ll want after those UFC million-dollar paydays he enjoyed, and it’s even harder to figure that WWE Creative as it’s now configured will have any interest or ideas in how to rebuild a guy they saw as maybe more of a traitor to the Universe than Bret Hart.

That’s if Lesnar has any interest in even leaving his Minnesota compound to return, even briefly, to a place he learned to hate.

It wasn’t so much as a ghost as a playful spirit that haunted Raw in Memphis, aptly, three nights later.

I haven’t seen anything like what happened in the Raw second hour since the late Andy Kaufman went on the Mike Douglas talk show and played “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on the bongos, to the utter shock of old showbiz vets Robert Goulet and Carol Channing. It’s the taking the bit past the point of comfort for everyone involved, including the performers, that Kaufman specialized in.

It’s something I never thought I’d see again. I honestly didn’t think it was possible......... (VIP members have access to complete article. See below for details.)

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This is a VIP excluisive article from this week's PWTorch Newsletter #1236. To read the rest of the article, and also gain access to the Bruce Mitchell VIP Library to read prior feature columns going back 20 years covering the biggest stories and controversies as no one else can, go VIP! Click here: www.pwtorch.com/govip.

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