Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [56]
I wanted a rematch!
I knew I’d have to work my way through some people to get back to Frank, but I didn’t care who they put in front of me. I wanted Frank Mir again, and I wanted him in the worst way. Every thought I had about Frank was consumed with bad intentions.
GETTING BACK ON THE HORSE
UFC 87 was scheduled for August 9, 2008, at the Target Center in Minneapolis, the UFC’s first-ever event in the state of Minnesota. I was going to fight in my adopted hometown, a couple of miles away from the U of M campus where I had wrestled for the Gophers.
I was originally matched up with UFC Hall of Famer Mark Coleman, who has a strong wrestling background and had had fights all over the world, but he suffered an injury shortly before the event and had to back out. With Coleman gone, the UFC asked me if I would fight “The Texas Crazy Horse,” Heath Herring. I didn’t even think about it before I said yes. I told Dana when we first met, I would fight anyone he wanted to throw at me, and I meant it. I wasn’t interested in building a résumé littered with easy victories. I came to the UFC to fight, and I was willing to step into the Octagon with anyone.
Besides, I’m a businessman. There’s a little bit of money on the undercard . . . but there’s a whole lot of money at the top. Which one would you go for? My goal was never to be the third match on the card in WWE, and that’s an environment in which the winners are predetermined. In the UFC, the outcomes are for real. You pit your athleticism and desire to succeed and win against the other trained athlete’s desire to succeed and win. One man moves on, the other drops down one or two notches. Keep going up, reach the top, make the money.
And like Curt Hennig taught me, “Get in to get out.”
I’m a big-money athlete. That’s not my ego talking. It’s a fact. That’s how I view myself. If I thought of myself any differently, I wouldn’t be a big-money athlete. I’d be some guy imagining what it would be like to be a main eventer. I dream, just like everyone else. I also go after my dreams and make them happen in reality.
Heath Herring was no slouch. He was a fighter with a tough guy’s reputation that he earned by fighting top-level guys like Fedor, Nogueira, Kongo, Cro Cop, Belfort, and Kerr. Heath was 43–27–1 before our fight. That’s a lot of experience in the fight game. This was a man who knew his way around every inch of that Octagon. For me, it was only my second fight in the UFC.
I don’t think Heath took me seriously, and that rubbed me the wrong way. He looked at me like I was a greenhorn, a WWE wrestler who didn’t belong in the Octagon with an experienced veteran like him. He acted as if it was beneath him to fight me, and I was determined to make him eat his own words. I’m sure to his friends and family, Heath is an “okay guy,” but I just didn’t like him.
I’m sure that Heath Herring doesn’t like me, either . . . after all, I broke his face.
I never want to take away any man’s ability to earn a living, but I have to admit I enjoyed that punch. One shot, and Herring was reeling backward, ass end over teakettle, with a broken orbital bone. If he hadn’t been such a tough bastard, the fight would have been stopped right there. But for three rounds, no matter how much I beat his ass, he just kept coming back for more. Heath took that beating like a man, and he never even thought about quitting. I have to give him that. He at least earned that much.
I won a unanimous decision for my first victory in the UFC. Heath Herring has never fought again.
UFC 91: MY FIGHT VS. RANDY COUTURE
I was told that my next UFC fight was going to be against Cheick Kongo, the French Muay Thai kickboxer. Kongo is one of the best strikers in the game, and I thought I would match up well with him because I could easily take him down and control him on the ground.
Then I got the word that Dana White wanted to offer me the opportunity of a lifetime. I wasn’t going to fight Cheick Kongo.