Speculation and rumors has been swirling for the past 10-days or so on various WWE message boards and newsletters that Brock Lesnar may be interested in returning to the UFC.
To add more fuel to the rumor fire, various MMA sites have also been perpetuating the rumors about potential back-door negotiations, secret meetings and even some WWE and UFC negotiations taking place.
I should point out though, at this point, none of this is confirmed. However, what we can confirm is that if Lesnar did want to get back into the UFC, there would be some major negotiation hurdles including his five-million dollar WWE contract which requires him to work limited dates with the WWE and to this point is exclusive.
Now, that is not to say Lesnar couldn’t renegotiate his current WWE deal, but based off previous negotiations, including ones between WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon and UFC President Dana White in the past, it will be pretty difficult to split time between both companies. Plus, the current plan for Lesnar in the WWE is that he should be back by around Wrestlemania 30, in New Orleans, on April 6th, 2014.
Making matters worse during White’s UFC 168 pre-fight media scrum yesterday, a MMAJunkie.com reporter asked White specifically about Lesnar being at UFC 168, which White responded with “Really? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
Obviously, not exactly a yes or no from White, but when you see the scrum video (which can be seen here) you can tell that White could potentially have something up his sleeve. Which I think we all know that Lesnar returning could mean big business.
The last time Brock Lesnar (5-3) was in the octagon he lost via TKO to Alistair Overeem at UFC 141, which did roughly 535,000 PPV buys. Not exactly the biggest PPV box office number for Lesnar, but UFC 141 was also on a Friday night, not a regular Saturday, so clearly that impacted that number. Lesnar’s previous two PPV appearances before UFC 141, did well over 1 million PPV buys including UFC 121 (1.05 m) and UFC 116 (1.16 m). So again, Lesnar has been instant PPV success.
Safe to say, with GSP and potentially Anderson Silva being out of the picture after tomorrow night, having Brock Lesnar return to the UFC, even for just one fight, would not only be big business for the UFC, but could easily break more gate and PPV records for the UFC.
The question is though, is this just Brock being Brock? Could this just be Brock trying to get more money out of the WWE? Honestly, he has done this before to us, so I guess we will all just have to stay tuned.