With two words – “I’m back” –Ultimate Fighting Championship superstar Brock Lesnar put the rest of UFC’s heavyweight division on notice.
Lesnar, the former heavyweight champion, announced Thursday that his comeback has begun after a flare-up earlier this year of diverticulitis, the stomach illness that threatened to end his career nearly two years ago.
“One day at a time for me,” said Lesnar, in a video released by sponsor Fusion Ammo, showing Lesnar hunting prairie dogs in North Dakota.
“I believe there’s still a bright future in the UFC for me.”
Lesnar announced in May that he was suffering again from diverticulitis, an intestinal disease which he was first diagnosed as having in November 2009. Lesnar was forced to withdraw from his main event in June versus Junior dos Santos at UFC 131 in Vancouver.
When initially diagnosed in 2009, Lesnar was told by doctors that he would need surgery to remove part of his colon, a procedure that likely would have ended his career. After losing 40 pounds during 11 days in the hospital, however, he bounced back.
Medication, treatment and recovery time allowed him to heal and return to UFC’s octagon without surgery. He beat Shane Carwin in July 2010 to retain his heavyweight title before losing his championship to Cain Velasquez last October.
Lesnar said in May that he had recently spent 14 hours at the Mayo Clinic, where tests showed visible inflammation in his stomach.
Now seemingly recovered again, he’s anxious to return to competition.
“My health is 100 per cent. I feel great,” said Lesnar.
“My motivation is there. I want to get on the map again. I want to become the UFC heavyweight champion again. I believe I will do that.”
Lesnar is the biggest pay-per-view draw in the world, joining Mike Tyson as the only athletes to twice draw more than one million buys on pay-per-view in a single year — Tyson did it three times in 1996, while Lesnar did it in 2010, headlining UFC 116 versus Carwin and UFC 121 versus Velasquez. He was also the highest-paid mixed-martial-artist in the world, according to ESPN, earning approximately $5.3 million in 2010.
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