If this indeed precipitated, CM Punk and Brock Lesnar might not have been the only WWE Champions to have signed on the dotted line of a UFC contract. On the most recent episode of UFC Unfiltered with Jim Norton and former UFC Welterweight Champion Matt Serra, Former WWE Champion and Hollywood A-Lister The Rock admitted he had aspirations of trading his bull-emblazoned wrestling tights for 6 ounce MMA gloves.
In his own words (courtesy of fansided.com):
“There was a time there where I thought, man, I achieved everything I wanted to achieve in WWE, my movie career is floundering a little bit, what do I do? I was relatively still young, I think I was 34. I thought, oh well maybe UFC. Maybe I should do something like that.
One would need an electron microscope to find the number of instances, someone as removed from MMA as The Rock is, to make it to the UFC. Setting aside the WWE element, the only top-tier UFC fighter that comes to mind from a completely non-martial arts background is Jimi Manuwa, who made his MMA debut at 28.
When asked about how he planned to go about preparing for something like that, The Rock said, “In my head, I felt like it was at least a two-year process for me to even get in the [Octagon], let alone the UFC. I wasn't quite too sure what to do or what kind of people to put around me at the time, so the idea kind of fizzled out and I continued to stay on the path of movie making.”
Well, on behalf of millions and millions of grateful fans around, Rock, it doesn’t matter what you thought!!!
