Brock Lesnar was the superstar that would carry WWE on his broad shoulders for many years to come. Recruited following a very successful amateur wrestling career, he took to professional wrestling’s rather different canvas like a natural. He looked and acted like a freak of nature, he was more agile than a 280lbs man has any right to be, he had great matches with just about anyone and had an aura about him which made everyone believe "this guy is the real thing". He could kick your ass. But the grind of wrestling every night began to get to him and, despite the best efforts of WWE management to accommodate him, he quit pro wrestling and tried to become an NFL player. Again, the verdict was that he was a freak of nature. He had no right to be that big, that strong and that fast. He sucked up knowledge like a sponge and, had he started playing American football earlier, he could well have been a star. But he was just a bit too old to be a rookie and he was let go. He did a few pro wrestling matches in Japan for big money but his next career choice would be to fight for real.

Lesnar has a very impressive amateur record – he was a national champion and could’ve been an Olympic contender had he followed it through. But amateur wrestling alone isn’t going to get you very far in mixed martial arts. Although grappling is perhaps the single most useful discipline, it has no end product. Amateur wrestling is judged on take downs and pins – neither of which will win you an MMA fight. It isn’t enough to get a man down and keep him there. You need to be able to work on the ground as well as learn a whole new game of working on your feet. Many wrestlers choose not to go into MMA because they don’t like being hit. Matt Hammill in the third season of The Ultimate Fighter looked a sure fire prospect when you saw him dominate guys in training. But put him in a fight and he quickly learned that being punched isn’t for him.

Brock Lesnar – after months of hype – finally made his mixed martial arts debut at the LA Coliseum at a show promoted by Japan’s K1, America’s EXC and cable giant Showtime. His opponent was supposed to be giant Korean kick boxer, Hong Man Choi but he was pulled a week before the fight when he failed a California commission medical examination. Choi has an impressive record and has notched up some big name victims. He was replaced by another Korean, Min Soo Kim, who was a foot shorter and whose professional record was a disappointing 2 wins and 5 losses. Ironically, one of his two wins was against Sean O’Haire – another former pro wrestler.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I was able to see the Lesnar fight a few hours after it happened. I downloaded two files – the fight itself and the entire show – and so saw almost immediately that the Lesnar fight would not be a long one. It was an eight megabyte fight. That’s not a lot of fight. If Lesnar lost quickly then his mystique would be ruined and his career would be over. If he won quickly then he would be in with a chance of making some huge money in this fastest of all fast growing sports.

Lesnar destroyed him. Took him down early, got a mount and pounded the crap out of him until he tapped out under the volley of punches. It may only have been a short display against an overmatched opponent but it showed that Lesnar has been training hard and learning the sport assiduously. His punching looked crisp – not the wild swinging of someone who has never practiced throwing real punches. His ground work was that of a mixed martial artist rather than a pure wrestler. He was working to get an MMA position not a Greco Roman position. His offence was well rounded and always working towards a purpose. Anyone looking to dismiss him as just a "fake" pro wrestler would’ve seen that he is far more than that. He’s a freak of nature and this week he’s decided to get good enough to be a professional fighter.

Where he goes from here is less obvious. The Japanese fighting scene has collapsed in the aftermath of the Pride yakuza scandal which cost them their television deal, pushed them to the edge of bankruptcy and ultimately lead their owners to sell the company to the UFC. In the US there is only Zuffa and their various companies. Lesnar is a big enough name to get UFC a lot of publicity and probably a lot of buys. Only one thing stands in the way - UFC is very wary of any connection with pro wrestling. The Japanese have an entirely different attitude to "real" vs "fake" and will happily accept crossovers but the Americans aren’t so open minded. UFC’s main goal at the moment is to be accepted at all levels as a legitimate and serious sport. Something ESPN would cover in the same newscast as it gives the baseball scores. Something newspapers would hype up and report on like they would a big boxing match. Using a name like Lesnar would open the door to unwelcome publicity and comment. Dana White has said in the past that he’d be interested in using Kurt Angle but Angle was an Olympic gold medallist before he was a pro wrestler and that gives everyone (no pun intended) an angle they can use when pushing the story. Lesnar has done very well at a lot of things but he’s still primarily a former WWE superstar and if he were to do well in UFC, there would be plenty of comedians lining up to make jokes about Hulk Hogan beating Randy Couture in the battle of the aging, balding warriors. And the like.

From what I saw last weekend, Brock Lesnar could be a serious contender in the UFC heavyweight division. He is inexperienced but fantastically gifted. If he were to join a camp like Randy Couture’s he would learn so much so quickly that he could be UFC heavyweight champion within a couple of years. Or he’d quickly discover what being punched feels like and decide to quit and become a NASCAR driver. Either way he just needs experience and with every fight we’ll get closer to knowing whether Brock Lesnar is the next big thing (again) or a scary looking gimmick. Personally, I think it’s the former.