My goal with this rant is to hopefully provide some information that might otherwise go overlooked. If you hate Brock, then I’m sure you’ll find information here that further proves he sucks. If you love Brock, then I’m sure you’ll find information below that helps explain how he’s already better than Zeus. Really though, this rant is for those that fall somewhere between hater and hugger. For those people that want to take an honest look at what he’s done thus far, and how it compares to others.

Brock Lesnar’s Fight History

Let us start by taking a look at each of Brock’s fights thus far. We’ll see how Brock ranked after each fight and where others stood early in their career.

Min Soo Kim – Win

This was Brock’s first fight and honestly it was a pretty bad choice. At the time of the fight Min was 3-5 with a rating below 1500. Why you would pair a “future #1 HW” against such a weak opponent in their first fight is beyond me.

I’m a big advocate of Risk Vs Reward. In this case Brock’s name would have provided sufficient enough reward for him to fight a higher rated fighter. I’m not talking someone 2k rated, but he should have at least been given a solid veteran with more wins than loses.

Having such a weak first opponent definitely cost Brock some points early in his career. Still, he won the fight and earned a solid 48.

Where fighters stood after 1 fight

Here’s a table showing the highest fighter ratings after a single career fight.

Strength of Schedule gets a lot of discussion as well, so here’s a list of people who had the highest Strength of Schedule after a single fight. The chart basically says who fought the highest rated opponent in their debut. It also shows mostly people who got their butt kicked. 8P

Frank Mir – Loss

The most interesting thing about this fight is that Brock lost. That put him at 1-1. However, he lost to an experienced fighter and a former champion. As a result the mma-elo.com system didn’t ding him too hard for the loss.

Despite not being dinged hard for the loss, Brock did suffer in the sense that he missed an opportunity. A win over a reasonable opponent at this point would have been worth 50+ points.

The other thing to realize is that this fight took place 2008-02-02, that’s a full 8 months after his debut on 2007-06-02. I’ll get into activity more later on, but in case you don’t make it through the rest of the rant I want to note that 8 months is a long time. On average fighters compete every 4 months, and early in a fighter’s career they tend to compete even more frequently than that.

Where fighters stood after 2 fights

Let’s again take a look at where other fighters stood two fights into their career.

Definitely more household names on the above list. Now let’s look at strength of schedule.

Heath Herring – Win

Heath Herring is a solid veteran fighter. At the time of the fight Heath had a rating of 1860 (would put him about 20th in the HW division). Heath is definitely a solid win on anyone’s resume and even more so for someone with only two previous fights.

The most controversial thing about the Heath fight is probably what followed. Before we get into that though, let’s take a look at…

Where fighters stood after 3 fights

When we look at overall rating after 3 fights we see a few interesting names. Aleks sits at #2, BJ is up to #4 Cain at #9, Lyoto at #10 and Frank Mir at #23 to name a few. The reason Brock isn’t on the list at this point is because of his loss to Mir. Again, if that fight had simply been a reasonable win he’d have cracked the top 25 and likely around top 10.

Strength of Schedule at this point has a few interesting names. Including HMC (Fedor and Cro Cop within first 3 fights), and Zulu (Fedor and Nog within first 4 fights). Neither farred so well, but that’s still a pretty crazy schedule. 8)

Randy Couture – Win

This is probably the most controversial fight in Brock’s career thus far. Not because of the outcome, but because the match got made in the first place. Following a win over Heath Herring (top 20ish) and sporting a 2 win – 1 loss record, Brock was given a title shot in the UFC against Randy Couture.

I don’t think anyone believes Heath Herring (top 20ish at the time and 4-4 in his last 8) was going to get a title shot if he’d beaten Brock. Furthermore, Brock was coming off a loss and it’s possible a win by Heath would have resulted in Brock being cut. Certainly having one fight outcome be the difference between a 1-2 record and possibly out of the UFC versus a 2-1 record and a title shot is pretty crazy.

In the war between MMA and MME, this is definitely a battle that MME won. There’s no doubt Brock is marketable and some people wanted to see the fight. The fact that a 2-1 fighter would be given a title shot in the “best” organization in the world after beating a top 20(ish) HW and a “can” (with a loss thrown in) is just too much for some people to swallow.

What needs to be made clear though is that many of the people who object to the fight taking place don’t “hate” Brock. If it’d been a 2-1 Cain or a 2-1 Aleks or whomever many of these same people would have had the exact same problem. Seeing a 2-1 fighter get such an oppurtunity almost entirely because of outside the sport factors is insulting to the sport (and the other fighters).

I know some people will say, “But Brock won, so he deserved it”. That simply isn’t true. In many cases getting the title fight is the hard part. Some fighters win numerous fights against guys ranked well above 20th and still never get their opportunity. It needs to be understood that someone can give Brock credit for winning the fight, but still acknowledge it should have never happened in the first place. Much like if Lutter had beaten Anderson, or when Serra did beat GSP.

Where fighters stood after 4 fights

As we look at overall rating after 4 fights we now see Brock on the list (at number 12). Again, if he’d won his second fight he likely would be sitting at #1. Some other interesting names we see are: Filho(#1) I’ll never understand how this guy gets no credit from some people, King Mo (#2) the number of people taking notice seems destined to grow, Cain (#3) constantly overshadowed by Brock but off to a solid start, Hunt (#8), Mir (#10), GSP (#11), Hughes (#20).

For Strength of Schedule I just have to mention Pawel. In his first 4 fights he fought: Big Nog, Josh Barnett, Aleks. I honestly have no idea who’s wife he slept with, but damn they better have had red hair!

Additionally, we also now see Brock Lesnar on the list as his overall schedule overcomes the very weak first opponent. He comes in at #9.

Frank Mir – Win

Brock’s most recent fight was a rematch against Frank Mir. This time Brock was victorious. Avenging a loss is always a good thing, and doing it against a former champion (and current interim champion) only makes it better.

That puts Brock’s career record to 4-1. Let us take a look and see where other fighters stood five fights into their career.

Where fighters stood after 5 fights

With the win over Mir, Brock passed a lot of fighters and landed at #2 on the list. Barely ahead of Cain, but very close to #1. There’s no doubt that if he’d have won his second fight (making him 5-0) he’d have easily had the highest overall rating after five fights of any previous fighter in history.

Brock Lesnar also comes in second when we look at Strength of Schedule. The debut against a very weak fighter (sub 1500) was a bit too much for Brock to overcome. Still, #2 highest Strength of Schedule after 5 fights is pretty impressive.

Brock Lesnar Vs Shane Carwin

Brock’s next fight is scheduled to be against Shane Carwin. Obviously we don’t know who will win, but let’s see how things might look…Btw, isn’t it great have a reliable and predicitable system that allows something like this? lol I know some might hate it, but the fact that I can offer up information and analysis like this is pretty awesome imo. *shrugs*

Here is the table showing overall rating after six fights…

With a win Brock will gain 66 points, putting him to 1863, that is exactly 1 point behind where Cain stood after 6 fights (and currently still stands). The interesting thing about that is again, *BROCK LOST*. Had Brock won his second fight he’d have easily been #1 after six fights. However, even with the loss the strength of Brock’s five wins in this case would be basically equal to Cain’s six, even with the loss factored in.

In terms of Strength of Schedule it’s not even close. Here’s the currently list for fighters after six fights…

Brock’s Strength of Schedule will be over 1800 following the Carwin fight. As long as the fight happens Brock is guaranteed having the highest Strength of Schedule after six fights.

If he loses

If Brock loses he’ll still have the highest Strength of Schedule after six fights. However, his overall rating would drop to 1763. Still not too bad for six fights into a career.

Activity

I mentioned Brock’s fight activity above and now I’d like to explore it in deeper detail. Thus far for his career Brock has competed less than expected. How much less could be debated, but here’s some information.

On average an MMA fighter competes every 4 months (3 fights a year). Brock had his first fight on 2007-06-02 and his fifth fight on 2009-07-11. If Brock had fought once very 4 months he’d have had his fifth fight around 2009-02-02. Instead he didn’t have his fifth fight until over five months later.

The previously mentioned fight against Carwin is currently scheduled to happen 2009-11-21, which is about four months after his last fight. However, that still means Brock will be at least one fight behind for his young career.

I say at least because history shows fighters competing far more frequently early in their careers. Here are just a few random fighters I picked out from the assorted top 25 lists above that you might recognize:

King Mo – His second fight was barely a month after his first. His third was about two months after his second. With another fight about two months after that. In fact, King Mo now has five career fights as well and he did that in about 1 year (12 months). That’s about half as long as it’s taken Brock.

Cain – Things get a little interesting because Cain’s second fight was only about two months after his first. However, his third fight didn’t happen for over a year after that. Once he started fighting again Cain had breaks of about 3, 4 and 5 months between fights (not in that order).

BJ Penn – BJ Penn is interesting because overall for his career he has actually competed less than expected. When looking at the start of his career though we see that BJ Penn’s second fight was less than two months after his first. Following that he had breaks of about: 4 months, 2 months, 4 months, 4 months.

Obviously there are the people that go nuts like Jon Jones (8 fights in less than a year to start his career), but no one is talking about Brock competing nearly that much.

Why Activity matters

Some might be wondering why activity is so important. There are actually a few reasons for it. One is that MMA is an incredibly physical sport (obviously). It really is too common for a fighter to get injured during training. The training itself also takes a toll on fighters. The truth of the matter is that having more fights win or lose takes added toll on fighters.

From a ranking point of view we also have to realize how early in his career Brock still is. He’s at 5 fights now, should be at least six, and he lost one of those fights. A couple more wins would do wonders to boost his ratings. Not just in terms of this site, but also for fans still unsure of how he will continue to perform.

What If

All this talk about activity brings up an interesting What If situation. For the sake of discussion we will assume Brock already had that “missing” fight and that it was a win over Shane (sorry Shane). That would have put Brock’s rating to 1863 and I’ll assume in this case setup a match against Big Nog. A win against Big Nog (based upon Big Nog’s current rating) would put Brock up around 1950 rating. Obviously a lot can happen, but historically that high a rating would put him in the top 10.

As I’ve touched on a few times we also have the issue of that loss. Not for the small amounts of points it cost him, but for the missed opportunity to gain points. Had that fight been a win it is very possible that the hypothetical situation listed above would have put Brock over 2k rating. That is a *VERY* good rating and would have likely put Brock top 3.

What we know

We have looked at the opponents, at the fights, and at where other fighters stood early in their careers. With all of that information, what are some of the things we can conclude?

Tough Opponents

The first thing that jumps out is that Brock has had a very high strength of schedule thus far in his career. With the exception of his first fight all of his opponents have been solid veterans with decent ratings.

Brock lost and it cost him some

Looking at the numbers it’s clear that the loss cost Brock some. The system didn’t directly ding him too much for the loss, but it was a missed opportunity. It seems apparent that some completely ignore the loss, but that is silly. You are talking about someone who’s only fought for two years and only has five total fights. To ignore 20% of them and something that happened not that long ago is foolish.

Even if you don’t want to directly ding Brock because he was young or has a tattoo on his chest or whatever, you still should acknowledge the missed opportunity. A win in that fight would have given Brock 25% *MORE* Career wins. That is how small his fight history is, and that is why the fight needs to be acknowledged.

Frank Mir is 40% of Brock Lesnar’s Career to date

Frank is a solid fighter and a former champion, but he has had a spotty fight history. The fact that Frank Mir makes up such a large percentage of Brock Lesnar’s entire fight career is one reason some people remain skeptical.

Some people are living in the future

From the numbers above it seems as though some people are living in the future. In a time when Brock has already beaten Shane and possibly already beaten Big Nog. There is no doubt that those two wins would significantly increase his rating (and his ranking). For now though he is just 4-1 and that means beating Shane and Big Nog would be a 50% increase in his career win total.

Brock hasn’t fought nearly as much as he could have

The above point gets even more interesting when we consider it wouldn’t be that outlandish for Brock to have already beaten Shane and Big Nog (or at least fought them). His current fight pace is lower than expected and significantly below what we usually see for new fighters.

What we don’t know

Even though the above information sheds some light on a few parts of Brock Lesnar’s MMA career there are still some questions that remain.

Why hasn’t Brock competed more

He has been healthy, he is considered a major draw, there are plenty of opponents. Why is it that Brock has competed so infrequently to this point in his career?

To the haters

What is it going to take for Brock to be “legitimate” in your eyes? I’m not talking #1, I’m just talking acknowledgment that he is a professional fighter and no longer a WWE personality.

To the huggers

Is it really so hard to see that many who raise questions about Brock or have issues with certain parts of his career are not blind hatters? Brock *HAS* lost. I’m not saying crucify him for it for life, but understand that losing 1 out of 5 is quite a lot.

Also consider that Brock really hasn’t fought that much. If you hug him so hard, shouldn’t you want him to fight even more? If he had a couple more wins under his belt I think you’d see more people start to give him credit. MMA isn’t as fast as some like to think and some fans being hesitant about a 4-1 fighter isn’t uncalled for (think Sok).

Speaking of belt. Understand that there are many people who like Brock that still are able to acknowledge the title shot was a bit much.

Finally, for the people that put Brock top 3 or whatever, how can Brock be ranked so much higher than many of the people he’s beaten? Min wasn’t top anything, Heath was around top 20, Randy was 10(ish) and inactive for over a year and Mir was somewhere in the top 15-20 depending on who you ask (Brock is 1-1 against him).

What if a MW beats a 3-5 guy, loses to a top 20 guy, then beats another top 20 guy, top 10(ish) guy and then avenges his loss. Does that immediately make him a threat to Anderson? Does he leapfrog fighters like Okami, Henderson, and Nate?

Wouldn’t you want to see maybe one or two more fights before you put them into that upper echelon of fighters? Even if you don’t want to wait for a couple more fights, is it really so hard to understand that some might want to see a guy have just a couple more wins before declaring exactly where the sun rises and sets?

To all the others

If you made it this far and are still reading, please leave me a message and let me know why…