A camera captured Lesnar in the locker room postfight, conferring with White. “It ain’t over,” he insisted. Then he added, less certainly, “I hope it ain’t.” At 31 years old, Lesnar had already tried and abandoned every lucrative avenue of employment available to him. If ultimate fighting didn’t work out, what was he going to do, squeeze himself behind a desk like Mr. Incredible? The expression on his face as he looked at Dana White said it plainly: I have no plan B.

He didn’t have to worry. White pitted him next against Heath Herring, a.k.a. the Texas Crazy Horse, a.k.a. cannon fodder. Lesnar’s first punch broke Herring’s orbital bone. “There was no way I was going to lose,” he says. For approximately 12 of the next 15 minutes, Lesnar was like a cobra devouring a mouse—patient, grim, inescapable. “Can you see me now?” he shouted to the crowd after winning by decision. It was, he says, a message “to all the critics that didn’t think I could produce in the Octagon.”

Despite Lesnar’s unimpressive 1-1 record, White promptly steered him into a title fight against a UFC icon, Randy Couture. “Yeah, he’s a great wrestler, but he was out­weighed and he’s past his prime,” says Lesnar. In the second round Lesnar landed a right to Couture’s temple, sending him to the canvas. Lesnar pounced and, straddling him, began bashing his head. Moments later the ref called the fight. For only the third time in his storied career, Couture had been knocked out. Lesnar was the new champ.

Does Frank Mir stand a chance in UFC 100? Did he get lucky in his first fight against Lesnar? Isn’t a more experienced Lesnar, who was already bigger and stronger, unstoppable? “I’m gonna murder him,” Lesnar says. “I count the days and the nights before I get to do that.”

“All I remember from last time,” says Mir, who once snapped an opponent’s forearm with a submission, “is him whimpering and wincing as I was tapping him.” Mir has studied Lesnar’s career, going all the way back to his NCAA days. “If you watched when he wrestled in college,” he observes, “his abilities were not very technical. He used his size and his power. He won matches by one and two points, drew the pace down, got real boring.” He says Lesnar fundamentally remains that kind of fighter and that Lesnar’s strategy will play directly into his own legendary sub­mission skills. White calls Mir “one of the two greatest heavyweight submission guys ever.” “There’s no way anybody can roll with me for 25 minutes and not get tapped,” Mir says. “It’s just impossible.”


An assistant is oiling Lesnar's body. Gleaming, he looks unreal, Photoshopped; I’m reminded of the strange sense you have when he fights that you’re watching something computer-generated, some kind of CGI monster in a movie, because of his combination of unnatural hugeness and unnatural lightness on his feet.

On the surface, Lesnar would seem to be a natural for Hollywood, following in the footsteps of his idols, like Schwarzenegger, and his former rivals, like the Rock. After all, even without special effects, he looks more Hulk-like than any of the movie versions. But Lesnar maintains he is simply an athlete. “I ain’t gonna walk over to Hollywood and say I’m the next Rock,” he says. “It may not look like I’ve got a brain sometimes, but I do. I’m not a movie star. Just because I had a stint in wrestling doesn’t mean that I can act. You watch some of these other guys that moved on to the movies, like John Cena or Stone Cold Steve Austin, and it just doesn’t look that good to me.”

That’s not to say he’s uncomfortable in front of the camera. Approaching him, I’m hit by the cloying scent of the oil smeared all over his torso. We’re talking about Frank Mir when I interrupt to joke, “You smell delicious, by the way.” I do know what I was thinking: There’s something comical about an enormous man who’s basically wearing perfume. But as soon as I utter those words, I realize I’ve fucked up massively. Galactically. You do not make sexually ambiguous quips to a man who grapples intimately with other men for a living.

Lesnar’s eyes narrow. His lips tighten. “What?” he asks. His tone is equal parts malevolence and disgust.

“What is that smell?” I stammer, trying to sound offhand about it.

He’s watching me closely. “Oil,” he sneers.

I brace myself for the most tooth-jarring, eardrum-popping bitch-slap ever administered, but it never comes. When he beats you up, as he did Chris Tuchscherer, or backs you down, as he’s just done me, you cease to exist for Brock Lesnar. He turns toward a photographer. “You want me to look at the camera?” he asks. “Or should I look through it?”