Brock Lesnar’s return to the UFC in 2016 was recently discussed when UFC’s former head of public relations that period from a decade ago.
Lesnar made his UFC debut in February 2008 and became the promotion’s top attraction and its heavyweight champion before the end of the year. Lesnar would headline UFC 100 in a gigantic rematch with Frank Mir, where he avenged his loss from the year prior and had high-profile fights with Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez, and Alistair Overeem before returning to WWE in 2012.
By 2016, Lesnar was about to turn 39 and received a huge offer to return at UFC 200 and fight Mark Hunt, and received the blessing from WWE to compete one more time.
Lesnar’s return was meant to be a major surprise announcement at UFC 199 in June 2016, but was reported several hours earlier by Ariel Helwani for the MMA Fighting outlet. The fallout saw Helwani and colleagues Esther Lin and E. Casey Leydon ejected from the Forum in Inglewood, California, that night with the threat that Helwani would be banned from covering UFC’s events in person. The media scrutiny of UFC’s decision led to a backtrack, and the ban was lifted as Helwani would cover UFC 200 in person.
Ant Evans, who led the UFC’s public relations department and moved to Fight Pass, recently appeared on the MMA History Podcast with Mike Davis and Joey Venti. Evans explained how much of a secret it was and described pitching Lesnar to be part of the UFC’s Hall of Fame induction class earlier that year.
Brock Lesnar was coming back to the UFC at UFC 200. It was kept completely under wraps. How under wraps? Well, I pitched to Dana (White) inducting Brock Lesnar into the UFC Hall of Fame for UFC 200, which was going to take place a couple of days before and Dana White, I mean poker face on the guy, he just kind of looked at me and said, ‘Maybe not this year for Brock, maybe another year’ and I said, ‘No, come on he was the headliner of UFC 100 and one hundred events later…it would be great’ and Dana goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t see it this time maybe another time’. What I didn’t know was that he was already signed to fight Mark Hunt at UFC 200, and they were going to keep it a surprise, and they were going to drop this promo during UFC 199.
While Helwani’s report was confirmation of Lesnar’s return, there had been speculation the day before, after Lesnar’s profile appeared on the UFC website and caused people to question if they had jumped the gun and spoiled their own surprise. ESPN’s Brett Okamoto asked White the day before during a scrum, and White vehemently denied there was anything to the website mention.
Lesnar’s return led to many problems as he bypassed the USADA testing protocol that a retired fighter is required to undergo before a fight. Lesnar beat Hunt by unanimous decision, but it was revealed that Lesnar failed a pre-fight drug test, and his fight night drug test with anti-estrogen drugs clomiphene and hydroxyclomiphene was detected.
Lesnar was fined $250,000 and suspended for one year, but never fought again.
His disclosed purse for the fight was $2.5 million but it was revealed in the antitrust lawsuit that Lesnar made $8 million for the fight.
