Paul Heyman Says Brock Lesnar Could Return To Conquer MMA

In an interview with the Fight Society podcast (via MMA Fighting), Paul Heyman spoke about Brock Lesnar’s retirement from MMA and said not to rule out the possibility that he will return to “conquer” the sport once again. Here are highlights:

On Brock wanting to compete: “Brock is, in his heart, a trained competitor. Now whether that means he’s going to look at this environment and say ‘You know what, I didn’t make the Vikings team in 2004 but I bet in 2017 I can and just because I can I’m going to just to show people that I want to and I take it’. Because when we named him the conqueror, that’s what he is. He’s a legit conqueror. You put a task before him and he conquers it. I really can’t tell you that it’s out of the realm of possibility of Brock Lesnar to say ‘I’m taking a few months off from WWE, I want to see how many home runs I can hit for the Minnesota Twins.’ People may laugh at that, but it’s the same people that laughed at him in 2004 when he went for the Vikings camp and he was the last person cut and that’s with a broken jaw, a fractured pelvis and diverticulitis. I think what’s next for Brock Lesnar besides what’s happening in WWE. Could it be UFC? Could it be another sport? I think it’s something he’s going to look at and say ‘I bet no one thinks I can do that, all right I’m going to conquer that’.”

On how Conor McGregor is similar: “It’s the same thing that’s motivating McGregor into wanting to fight Mayweather. Because, admittedly I would say, I’d have to say that a great deal of that is obviously the allure of the enormous payday but a lot of it also has to be the lure of ‘people think I can’t take this guy and I can take this guy.’ It’s the same thing with Brock.”

On Brock’s mindset: “It’s not just looking at UFC and he’ll say ‘At my worst, beating me cost Cain Velasquez 14 months of his career. When I was not 100 percent healthy, I beat the greatest heavyweight of all time, Randy Couture. When I came in for UFC 100, I was fighting a guy who had a psychological advantage because he tapped me out and is a former UFC heavyweight champion in Frank Mir and I pummeled him.’ At the same time, Brock could look at that and say ‘I want that again.’ He may do race car driving. You never know with him because something is going to trigger that. He’s going to be sitting there one day and someone is going to say can you imagine how hard that is to do? And he’ll look over and say, ‘Not for me’.”