#3 Brock Lesnar and his “coaches”
Brock Lesnar never trained with a real MMA coach or team and still won the UFC Heavyweight championship. I will argue, that accomplishment is more of an indictment of the UFC Heavyweight division than anything else.
Lesnar has had a variety of “coaches” over the years, including Erik Paulsen and Rodrigo Medeiros. But the problem is Brock writes all the checks, so he gets to call the shots. Various sparring and training partners reported that they were told not to go too hard on him, and Brock’s team allegedly brought in jobbers to build his confidence.
Obviously, the health problems that derailed Lesnar’s career would have taken a toll, no matter where he trained, but it’s hard not to imagine a “what if” scenario where Lesnar left the comforts of home and traveled to American Top Team or The MMA Lab and ended up being the greatest of all time.
I think of Lesnar as MMA’s Shaq. He gave a 75% effort, won enough to justify that he wasn’t a loser, and had the best possible time he could. In that respect, he kinda won.
