Chris Carr writes with his thumbs better than most of you write with 10 fingers. Here is the second installment of the Star Tribune sports page designer / fantasy football expert’s interesting weekend in Las Vegas. (In case you missed it, here is the epic Part I). This time around, Chris details the Brock Lesnar UFC experience. Chris?

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Vegas Vacation Part 2: Brock Lesnar reappears

Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas: Where football is king and the big game casts its shadow over the entire strip. A sure thing, you’d assume — a stone-cold lock as they say out here.
Not this year. Not all weekend at least.
Our old friend Brock Lesnar — he of great Gophers wrestling success and a celebrated 2004 training camp with the Vikings — and his big shadow crashed the party. Lesnar made his Ultimate Fighting debut on Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay. The event was intense and impressive on many fronts. But the most surprising part to me was the buzz is created out here. No way did I think Lesnar’s fight would make a ripple on this weekend. I mean c’mon: This was Super Bowl weekend in Vegas — the next best thing to having a ticket right? Not even a 6-3 265-pound mountain of man could make a dent in SBXLII buzz. Or so I thought. Wrong.

I even went almost three hours without hearing Tom Brady’s name. The next day, Super Bowl Sunday, people were still asking how a 265-pound giant was twisted into submission in 90 seconds. And what a wicked 90 seconds it was. (Scoot forward to around the 7-minute mark if you want to skip the pre-match stuff). A hulking figure in the octagon and clearly jacked for this Lesnar measured up his opponent Frank Mir for only a few moments after the bell before charging and slamming him to the mat. The crowd of 10,500 went absolutely bananas at the sight of this new fella this Lesnar monster pancaking the former UFC champ. Lesnar pulled out the old Gopher moves and pinned Mir against the mat. And that’s when he went backalley on him. Think Ralphy from ”A Christmas Story” when he blew a fuse on the green-eyed school bully. Lesnar was pounding on Mir’s face relentlessly.
My company up close on press row and the screaming crowd were shocked by what they were seeing. Mir wasn’t supposed to be someone’s punching bag. He’s no Lesnar — who is? — but he’s a big dude at least 250. I wondered whether the ref would stop the fight; that’s how much Lesnar was dominating for the 1:20. The next 10 seconds was vintage UFC, I was later told. The strongman beating the snot out of the technician until he exposes a limb for a half-second too long. Lesnar’s mistake: He left a leg lingering. At about the 1:22 mark, with Mir still on his back and blood running down his face, he snatched Lesnar’s leg and wrenched it. The former Gopher went tumbling down. Three seconds later Lesnar was slapping the mat, seconds from ”having his Achilles’ tendon torn in two” it was later explained to me by another reporter.
For my UFC virgin eyes it was very much a Whaa Happen’? moment. One second our guy Brock was in the process of rearranging this dude’s face and the next he’s in jeopardy of having his foot snapped off. The beauty of UFC I guess.

Monday night, while reflecting on the weekend I realized Lesnar’s fight and the Patriots’ season were exact paralells. Dominate the bejesus out of the competition for the first 98 percent and then suddenly and dramatically collapse into submission. Lesnar took it a lot better than Belichick & co., however. Even more impressive than his power and agility was his demeanor Saturday night. There is zero pro wrestling shenanigans left in Lesnar. No showboating before. And he was all class after the fight. In the octagon after the fight Lesnar called Mir ”the better fighter” for all 10,000 to hear. And in the postfight press conference he was humble and seemed genuine about his desire to be a UFC champ someday.
The reporters who cover this sport closely think he could be a force someday. How soon will he fight again? ”I’m not sure,” he responded. ”I’m going to go home and do some ice fishing and then get back at it. Back to the drawing board. … But after the fishing.” Cool guy it seems. The UFC crowd seemed to warm to him after booing him initally. They loved his furious ”Here I come!” attack style. And the UFC press will eat up his small-town Minnesota nice attitude. Personally I’m not sure I’ll ever see another minute of his UFC career. But for one night I watched Lesnar and the UFC take down the mighty Super Bowl in Vegas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.