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MITCHELL'S TAKE
MITCHELL: Lesnar's UFC debut goes just like its worked cousin WWE would have booked it Feb 5, 2008 - 9:59:22 PM
The Ultimate Fighting Championship never looked more like its worked cousin World Wrestling Entertainment than in Saturday night's match between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir. The match played out like Vince McMahon himself might have booked it, if only things worked out exactly as he envisioned it.
There was the hot outsider, Brock Lesnar, who the promotion both wanted to embrace as The Next Big Thing they always need and wanted to fail to prove that the brand – their way of fighting – was dominant.
Vince McMahon would have booked hot new star Brock Lesnar just like UFC did. Think of the excitement the night ECW champion Taz stepped into the ring on Raw – only to be beaten handily by Triple H while ECW Icon Tommy Dreamer looked like a chump. Then there was the time WWE and WCW finally appeared together on that Nitro show – only for that dream match-up to be cooled considerably when Shane McMahon was revealed to be the new WCW owner. What about when the beret-wearing Stephanie McMahon headed up the long-wished-for Extreme invasion of WWE or when ultimate WCW badass Bill Goldberg put on that blonde wig in his Raw debut? In each of these cases McMahon opted to take the edge off of his new attraction in favor of the brand he built himself. Each time money was left on the table – at least in theory.
There was more going on with many UFC fans' hatred of Brock Lesnar than just his strong heel promos. Those fans were loyal to the brand – not just of UFC but also of the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. Further, many of them don't like the way Dana White books matches based on box office appeal instead of a strict sports model. In other words, forget Lesnar's NCAA wrestling championship, the last thing many people in and out of UFC wanted to see was this fake wrassler step into the main event and win.
Did Dana White do what Vince McMahon has done so many times when booking someone who first got hot outside his own brand? By having Lesnar by-passing the usual debut match against an easy opponent did White book his expensive new start to lose just to put over his brand – despite the fact that Lesnar was now an important part of it? Would he do that even though an expensive acquisition like Mirko CoCrop has so far been a flop because, unlike in WWE, you can't depend on match finishes to go as planned?
Well, if he did, unlike when Vince McMahon tried this, it couldn't have gone better – for his brand, for Lesnar's opponent Frank Mir, or for Lesnar himself. Fans of Ultimate Fighting saw that even an impossibly huge, impossibly athletic dilettante who trained with the best non-stop for almost two years couldn't just walk into the Octagon and dominate. They saw former heavyweight champion Frank Mir, whose heart had been questioned in lieu of a career-changing motorcycle accident, defend the UFC way - surviving an avalanche of heavy blows, only to pick his spot and make Lesnar tap. Mir is back on his feet, if only metaphorically, as a marketable main-eventer.
And Brock Lesnar? His exciting Force Of Nature aggressive attack on Mir gave UFC fans a taste of the new type of action he might bring to the Octagon. He walked out of the cage with more respect from UFC fans than he went in with – an important consideration if he did not bring in the curious WWE fan in big numbers - as a non–sell-out, papered house in Las Vegas might suggest.
Booking this match got UFC's brand, a veteran former champion, and their hot new star all more over than they were when the night started. Vince McMahon never had it so good, at least not with a trick he's used many times.
Still, I couldn't help thinking it was too bad the workers who played characters of the Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin surrounded the Octagon before, during, and after the fight, instead of the real thing.
If those guys had hit the ring after the fight and attacked Mir and announcer Joe Rogan, you'd really have something
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