As everyone surely knows by now, Brock Lesnar has been sick for over three weeks and was forced to pull out of his scheduled November 21 title defense against Shane Carwin at UFC 106.
In the latest issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription required, and recommended), Dave Meltzer reports that Brian Stegeman, a Lesnar manager, says Lesnar has “been bothered by upper respiratory issues, a fever and extreme fatigue.” Stegeman goes on to say that Lesnar recently took a week off of training, hoping that would cure his ills, but that his health still did not improve.
Payout Perspective:
When news broke of Lesnar’s illness, there was almost immediate skepticism regarding whether he was ill at all, which was reinforced when the purportedly sick UFC heavyweight champion showed up as scheduled at a Minnesota Vikings football game. Some suggested that if Brock felt well enough to attend a football game, he was well enough to train for his scheduled November fight against Shane Carwin. I can tell you from personal experience that this is simply not true, not at all true.
I hope and believe that Brock is merely suffering from a bad case of the flu, but reading Dave Meltzer’s report literally gave me goosebumps, taking me back to the winter of 1996, when I suffered the first attack of what I would learn (six long years later) was something known as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome (I will refer to both simply as “CFS”; mine has been under control for more than five years).
I was working in a movie theater as a cashier and had gotten ill with what I believed to be the normal winter bug. Two weeks passed, however, and I still felt extremely sick, with a terrible fatigue accompanying the strangest kind of soreness on my calves. It was all I could do to just stand during my shift: here I was, a heretofore strong and healthy bodybuilder, and I felt like I was 80-years-old. I had just begun working at the theater and one of the managers asked me whether I was “sickly.” I was stunned, didn’t know how to respond. I said, “not until now.”
Anyway, for eight years I suffered on and off from this devastating illness, and indeed, even attended a Jets game with my then girlfriend in 1998, during one of the CFS outbreaks. I couldn’t even stand during the national anthem. I actually believed I was suffering from some sort of terminal illness that was yet to be diagnosed. I went to a ton of doctors until it finally was diagnosed as CFS, and nobody could say what was going on, despite my having taken a battery of tests, many of them multiple times under several different doctors. In fact, many lay and professional people believed (and probably still believe) that CFS exists only in the mind; news that broke weeks ago, however, links CFS directly to the same sort of virus responsible for HIV. My response to the news is basically, “it should have been obvious to the experts all along.”
Anyway, there was an extended two-year period in which I couldn’t even lift weights at all, the CFS was so bad. And when I read that Brock is suffering respiratory problems along with extreme fatigue, and that it’s lasted over three weeks, it makes me worry, but then again I was raised by a very Jewish mother, and I have the worry gene.
The thing I can state with certainty from experience is that Brock is suffering right now, and being the active person he is, I’m not just referring to a physical suffering. Being unable to train for a full month is psychologically devastating to someone as active as Lesnar.
Be happy Brock is not fighting on November 21. (Except for all you haters who want to see Brock lose any way possible, even if he’s not nearly at his best. You know the type, the kind of fan who was begging the referee for a stand up five seconds before Brock was pulled off of Frank Mir at UFC 100).
