Parapahrased for the title, quote is bolded
Luke Thomas: Were you surprised by Brock Lesnar's retirement?
Dave Meltzer: Well, since I heard rumors all week ... no, I wasn't surprised. The way he lost, when that fight was over, I expected him to retire at that moment. When he grabbed the mic and started talking, I go, "He's gonna retire."
Lesnar has made a lot of money and this time he saved his money. He doesn't live high and he's got a life that he wants to lead and he's got the money to lead it for the rest of his life and I always thought that Lesnar wasn't gonna stick around and be a Chuck Liddell or a Wanderlei Silva or a Mirko Cro Cop or all these guys who keep fighting because they're fighters and they just convinced themselves that they can still get it. They say, "Physically, I'm diminished, but I'm a smarter fighter." I think a lot of older fighters think that. You are smarter but it cannot overcome your physical diminishment as you get older. Very, very few can do that.
I think with Brock, he didn't fool himself. I think that Brock saw that athletically, he wasn't what he once was and that's all he had going for him. He was a very good athlete who's athletic ability transferred very well to fighting. He was not a great all-around fighter and he was too old to become that. If he was 27 and he goes, "I can shore up these weaknesses," he's 34 and got a lot of mileage. Those four years of pro wrestling took a lot out of his body. There's injuries everywhere and I think that illness devastated him and I think you could see the difference.
He didn't have the confidence going in and the key is, it's a lot like Fedor. You lose a little bit of that speed in the heavyweight division and all of a sudden, you're not the same. I don't think Brock's nearly as quick as he was a couple years ago and that's the difference. I'm sure he can lift the same weights, he's huge but he was never that great all-around fighter.
When you lose that speed, there are exceptions but you don't see a lot of freestyle wrestlers in the heavyweight division at 34 competing for Olympic gold. Karelin was done at 32, he was a Greco guy but he was done at 32 so he was even younger than Brock and Kerelin was the biggest physical freak of all physical freaks. Far more than Brock ever was. That's kind of like your prototype. Guys like that, when their bodies break down and they lose that thing, they're done at that level and like most of them, I think that when both of them in their minds thought they were done, they got out. You didn't see Kerelin coming back at 36 trying to win that gold medal. As soon as he got that silver and he knew that he was not what he once was knowing that the old Kerelin would have destroyed Rulon Gardner no problem, he got out and Brock's the same way.
If he had come out college at that point if the sport were as big as it is now and he would have gone right into this, he wouldn't have done pro wrestling. I think he probably could have been the greatest heavyweight we've ever seen because he did have those athletic gifts and he would have been, at 22, I don't think physically just looking at him he would have been a great striker, but he had such power that I think he could have been a knockout guy and a decent enough striker to set up his wrestling and he'd have been the best wrestler if he'd kept his wrestling up.
He took eight years off wrestling and then he came back in the sport. You don't see a lot of guys take eight years off wrestling and come back and be what they once were as wrestlers so that Brock Lesnar, yah, I think he could have been an all-time great.
This one coming in at that age, he had a lot going against him but if he didn't have the diverticulitis and he would have been in camp year-round and he would have been learning the submissions because he probably could have been pretty good at the submission game because that comes from wrestling and I think he probably would have done pretty well with that because he is a great student and he's not a stranger to training hard. Striking, he probably never would have been great at, but I think he would have been a lot better.
What was gonna hurt him was when the speed was gone because the speed made him more than the power. Power's great, it is, but this is a speed sport. You look at all of these guys, when they lose a bit of that speed, that's when they fall from the top. It's not when they lose the power. At some point, a guy of his size, 35-36, it still would be tough I would think. I think the diverticulitis, it had to take a lot out of him.
I was stunned when this match was announced because it was too soon and in hindsight, when I look at what happened in this match, I think he was looking for a way out. That's not the right wording. He was looking at life after fighting after the Carwin fight. I can tell you that for sure. If you remember when I was telling people, I used that term and people go, "Oh, he's gonna quit for pro wrestling,"
I'd be stunned if he ever goes back to pro wrestling as a regular pro wrestler. Now will he do like one Wrestlemania match? I think he will. He'll do one match or two matches or a four appearances per year type of thing. Sure, I could see him doing that but going back to pro wrestling as a profession? There's no way he'll ever do that. He would rather fight than do that but I think that when what happened in the Carwin fight happened, I think in his mind, there's a reason he got out of pro wrestling.
There's a bunch of reasons but one of the reasons he got out of pro wrestling was, he was in the locker room one day and he saw all these guys 40 years old with their fake tans and gobbling those pain pills and hurting real, real bad and he was like, "When I'm 40, I want to be able to do everything that I can do. I don't want to be a crippled up guy," and that's why he got out of a business that he was making a ton of money in.
The same thing is gonna happen in this business. He's got money and when the time comes about getting beat up, he's not gonna want to get beat up. He's gonna get out when he feels that he's getting beat up and the Carwin fight, he got beat up but he had the confidence that he survived it. I think he also had a thing of, "don't stay too long," and this is what happened. A lot of guys would want to come back but if he had the confidence in his athletic ability, where he used to be and he could still be a top guy, he'd still go. But he's not getting beat up to be a guy who's no longer a main eventer or a guy who fights Roy Nelson or Cheick Kongo, people like that. I never thought that he would stay for that.
