KIDWCKED
10-22-2010, 10:48 PM
c/p from foxsports by Mark Kriegel.
Updated Oct 22, 2010 5:11 PM ET
LOS ANGELES
The Baddest Man on the Planet was a moniker of necessity invented for Mike Tyson, who spent a good deal of his underachieving career without a real title.
Turned out Tyson wasn’t nearly so bad — bad as in shut your mouth, bad — as he was iconic: straight outta Brooklyn, a hip-hop lyric brought to life. Perhaps that’s why it still seems odd, at least for those of a certain age, to consider the successor to his mythical title.
Brock Lesnar, the UFC’s heavyweight champ, and probably the biggest pay-per-view attraction in combat sports, is another kind of archetype: the Super White Boy, from rural Minnesota by way of South Dakota. Pale and gargantuan, Lesnar has endorsement deals for beef jerky and ammunition, and muscles on his eyebrows.
At 6-foot-3, sporting a full beard for hunting season, he’ll show up a little under 270 to fight Cain Velasquez, a slight underdog, Saturday night at the Honda Center. But Lesnar is more than a look. The years he spent indentured to Vince McMahon at the WWE have served him well. A lot of guys can fight. But how many can really play the heel?
Still, you wonder, as you do about anyone who profits from playing heel or the hero, how much is authentic?
“I love it out here,” he says, with a quality I take to be practiced, if deadpan, disdain.
“You hate it here,” I say.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he says. “I love it.”
Updated Oct 22, 2010 5:11 PM ET
LOS ANGELES
The Baddest Man on the Planet was a moniker of necessity invented for Mike Tyson, who spent a good deal of his underachieving career without a real title.
Turned out Tyson wasn’t nearly so bad — bad as in shut your mouth, bad — as he was iconic: straight outta Brooklyn, a hip-hop lyric brought to life. Perhaps that’s why it still seems odd, at least for those of a certain age, to consider the successor to his mythical title.
Brock Lesnar, the UFC’s heavyweight champ, and probably the biggest pay-per-view attraction in combat sports, is another kind of archetype: the Super White Boy, from rural Minnesota by way of South Dakota. Pale and gargantuan, Lesnar has endorsement deals for beef jerky and ammunition, and muscles on his eyebrows.
At 6-foot-3, sporting a full beard for hunting season, he’ll show up a little under 270 to fight Cain Velasquez, a slight underdog, Saturday night at the Honda Center. But Lesnar is more than a look. The years he spent indentured to Vince McMahon at the WWE have served him well. A lot of guys can fight. But how many can really play the heel?
Still, you wonder, as you do about anyone who profits from playing heel or the hero, how much is authentic?
“I love it out here,” he says, with a quality I take to be practiced, if deadpan, disdain.
“You hate it here,” I say.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he says. “I love it.”