On Saturday night, if you didn’t walk away from the Shane Carwin versus Brock Lesnar fight asking yourself wondering what just happened, you either aren’t a fan of MMA or you were hitting on the waitress at Buffalo Wild Wings.
It wasn’t worth it, and unless your waitress looked like Arianny Celeste and you sealed the deal, because you missed out on what will probably be the best heavyweight fight this year — a fight that actually lived up to the hype.
Lesnar would only throw two power punches, and the fight would end by submission, but would you have believed it if someone told you a fight between Lesnar and Carwin would last beyond the first round. It wasn’t even Carwin, who was supposed to have an excellent ground game, on top of that, according to Greg Jackson, who got the submission — it was Lesnar
We learned a lot about both of the fighters, in spite of the overall awkwardness of some of the numbers: we learned that Lesnar isn’t completely indestructible, and we learned that Carwin is definitely prone to gassing out.
When Carwin caught Lesnar with a counter right and fought off the ensuing takedown after the fighters felt each other out in the first round, Carwin looked like he had the right game plan. Landing absolute bombs with the referee looking down at Lesnar, who was barely defending himself, and looked very close to turtling up, Carwin capitalized on a Lesnar slip and pinned him to the ground against the cage. Tiring, Carwin had to back off of Lesnar to catch his breath. To go back to ground, he made another short-lived effort and take Lesnar out, but he was too tired, and Lesnar worked his way back up to his feet.
In the second round, Lesnar came out and scored a quick takedown. Into the mount position, he then worked his way and right at the moment everybody thought he would posture up and start smashing Carwin with his 4XL gloves, he trapped Carwin’s right arm against his neck, jumped to the right, and locked in a suffocating arm triangle choke. Carwin hung on for a few seconds before Lesnar made a slight adjustment, sinking the choke in.
With a strong wrestling base in Cain Velasquez, next up for Lesnar is another power puncher. However, Velasquez may even hit Lesnar harder, if Velasquez smells blood in the water he won’t back down. Next up for Carwin, probably a fight that is more about his getting him mentally back on track as opposed to physically. He’s gonna be a handful for anyone in the heavyweight division, if he can learn to pace himself.