The maintenance crew at the Mandalay Bay events center better take some extra time to reinforce the cage before this one. Come fight time, Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin will likely be checking in at a combined weight of almost 550 pounds. I’m stoked to see this fight just on account of how big these guys are. What makes this fight even more exciting is the fact that there’s genuinely some bad blood between these two.
They’ve been giving shots back and fourth to each other for quite a while now and it really started after UFC 100 when Shane Carwin basically called out Lesnar for his post-fight antics…
“The flipping off of the fans that just lined your pockets with millions of dollars is just LAME. He may be a champion, but he has a long way to go before he earns the respect of a CHAMPION. I hate that he disrespected the greatest sporting fans in the world and I can‘t wait to fight him. Really it comes down to respect and I don‘t think that he respects the sport or the fans of this sport. He may be well known, but fame does not equal respect.”
When the UFC heads up their promotion for this fight, I can really see them playing up the classic nice guy vs. bad guy angle. And of course, it didn’t take long for Brock Lesnar to counter with some trash talk of his own…
“Some of the guys he’s beaten (Carwin) aren’t even worth having on your record. He hasn’t fought anybody. He’s fought Gonzaga, so I really think he’s 1-0.”
When questioned about his wrestling background, Lesnar – who’s a Division I champion – followed up with this..
“He’s a tough guy and a wrestler. But he’s a Division II national champion – enough said. I don’t know what he is, 11-0, 10-0, but he’ll have a loss against Brock Lesnar”
And speaking of their wrestling abilities, that’s really where things get interesting here. Up until now, both of these guys have relied on their wrestling ability and clear size and strength advantage to manhandle their opponents. Lesnar will likely have the advantage in size since he has to cut to get down to the 265 pound weight limit and after he makes weight, he bulks up again and usually enters the cage at around 280 pounds the following night.
Carwin, on the other hand, doesn’t cut as much weight as Lesnar does so he’ll likely be the smaller of the two. Cage Potato put together a cool comparison of the two which can be viewed here – Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin.
Carwin has more fights, but he’s finished them all within the first round and because of that, he doesn’t have much ring time in the octagon. Lesnar has spend over half an hour in the octagon – which is more than enough to alleviate the “octagon jitters” that so many inexperienced fighters seem to get.
This fight can really go either way. Lesnar has a slight advantage when it comes to size and he earned his titles at a significantly higher level than Carwin did. That being said, I think that Carwin is big enough, strong enough and skilled enough to prevent himself from being manhandled by Lesnar. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if their size and wrestling ability canceled each other out.
If this ends up coming down to a stand up war, then it’s tough to gauge since we haven’t seem much stand up from either fighter. Lesnar was getting owned in the stand up against Mir and from the looks of his training videos, it looks to be a real weakness of his. Carwin on the other hand can take a shot, as well as dish them out. We saw that in his fight against Gonzaga.
There’s so many question marks in this fight and I’m looking forward to all the questions being answered at UFC 106 in Vegas..
