Meet the new Brock, not same as the old Brock

It will have been nearly a year and a half since Brock Lesnar submitted to Frank Mir’s kneebar at UFC 81 in February of 2008 – the fight that marked Lesnar’s UFC debut when the two rematch at UFC 101 on July 11.

And this time when they meet, the stakes will be much higher. Each now owns a piece of heavyweight championship real estate. Lesnar is the UFC heavyweight champion, having bested Randy Couture with his heavy hands and destructive knees. Mir is the interim champion. He earned the designation by doing something no one had ever done before; knocking out then interim champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, at a time when Couture’s UFC title and status were still up in the air.

With a professional record of a mere 3-1, Lesnar’s level of experience is the easy target… and one which Mir has latched on to.

“I think that a lot of people realize that he was only 1-1, he had a .500 record in the UFC when he got a title shot,” the interim champ commented to MMAWeekly.com recently. “So I think the more that he can scream about my belt, people maybe don’t look at his.”

Misdirection may be a strategy that Mir sees coming out of Camp Lesnar, but Lesnar’s lead trainer, Greg Nelson of Minnesota Martial Arts Academy, believes there’s a lot more to the champion than his experience belies.

“Brock’s an entirely different fighter. He’s grown leaps and bounds in the skill level. He’s going to be a wiser fighter. He’s going to be more well-rounded,” Nelson stated. “It’s going to be an entirely different Brock when he goes in there.”

Mir and Lesnar were initially slated for the rematch to happen at UFC 98 later this month. Mir, however, had to undergo minor surgery to repair the meniscus in his knee, putting off their date until July.

Nelson says that Lesnar utilized the delay to do his best to add to his experience level, albeit without an actual fight.

“We just got done with a training camp, as if we were training for the May fight. We brought everybody in to work with him and we trained just as if we were going through a training camp,” Nelson told MMAWeekly.com.

“Obviously (Brock) wants to fight, but we just take it in stride. Then we decided okay, let’s use this to our advantage, get some more training, get some more time, get some more guys. Gives us more time is how we look at it.”

Still, that doesn’t sway Mir away from pointing at faults in the big man’s game. As he said in a recent interview, “I see a lot of things that he’s done in his last couple of fights that I think are mistakes that are not really his fault, they’re maybe his trainer’s faults. How can he be so talented, an NCAA champion, probably one of the best wrestlers to come out of college in the heavyweight division, and still make some of the real basic balancing and footwork mistakes that he’s making right now?”

Nelson is undeterred by the interim champion’s barbs. He knows that Lesnar isn’t yet at the apex of his skills. But who is?

“You could say that about everybody. The bottom line is it’s an entirely different sport, wrestling and striking. So you’ve got a great, talented athlete who’s doing something right,” said the trainer. “In one punch, he broke Heath Herring’s eye socket and basically controlled the whole fight because of that punch. And knocked out Randy Couture with the same punch and knees.

“He’s such a strong guy. And not only strong, but agile. It’s great. It’s like training Sean Sherk, you know, he’s not a gifted guy, but works real hard and he’s like another version of that. It takes time to develop any game.”

Additional reporting by Steve Marrocco.