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As swiftly he vanished, Brock Lesnar is back.
The UFC's heavyweight champion -- out of the public eye and out of action since July due to a serious abdominal illness -- resurfaced on Wednesday. Lesnar made a morning appearance on ESPN's SportsCenter alongside UFC President Dana White to announce he's completely recovered from the disease that nearly ended his career and that he'll return to MMA action this summer.
Even for fans who'd already heard rumblings that he'd returned to training, the news was better than expected.
Lesnar called his recovery from diverticulosis, an infection that caused a hole to develop in his stomach that doctors said would almost certainly require career-ending surgery, "a miracle." He also claimed the ordeal of the last several months left him with a new outlook on life.
"I take my hat off to the doctors … that pretty much saved my life and my career ...," Lesnar said. "I didn't want to (have surgery). If I could beat the odds, I was going to do everything in my power to do that."
The man the WWE once called "The Next Big Thing" could make his come back as early as UFC 114. First, the UFC will go through with plans to have Frank Mir fight Shane Carwin for an interim title in March. The winner of that bout will get Lesnar in his first trip back to the Octagon. When that happens, it'll likely deliver a record-shattering pay-per-view buyrate for America's largest mixed martial arts company.
Clearly, Dana White had good reason to smile his way through yesterday's ESPN interview. Regardless of fans' personal opinions on Lesnar -- which are often polarized -- his cash cow is back and, frankly, that's great news for MMA as a whole.
But what to make of Lesnar's claims that he's a changed man?
"I believe things happen for a reason," Lesnar said yesterday, during the wide-ranging media conference call that followed his morning appearance on ESPN. "It gave me a new perspective on life and my family. I'm a young guy. These things aren't supposed to happen. I consider myself a healthy human being. I'm 32 years old and for something like this to happen to me, I definitely have to re-evaluate."
As for the specifics of that personal revolution ... well ... Lesnar says he's changed his diet. The rest of the champ's demeanor is the same as it ever was. Brash. Outspoken. Hard to enjoy. That includes yesterday's frank dismissal of the rest of the UFC's heavyweight division.
"I know one thing, all those guys are sh-ting their pants right now," he said of potential challengers like Shane Carwin, Frank Mir, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Cain Velasquez.
Lesnar went on to call Mir, who handed the former NCAA wrestler his first loss before falling to him at UFC 100, a "stalker" who's made it the "mission of his life" to get back in the cage with Lesnar.
"It's been a while since I've had a stalker," Lesnar quipped, "but I'll take care of that if I ever face him again."
So for all the claims that he's revaluated his life, MMA's most notorious bad boy seems remarkably unchanged.
Almost more puzzling are Lesnar's claims of a miraculous recovery. Even during yesterday's media appearances, Lesnar and UFC President Dana White said little about what doctors think may have caused the recent health scare or what cured it, not to mention the chances that it might return.
A quick Google search shows that diverticular diseases -- the kind the nearly stole Lesnar's career -- are often simply brought on by low-fiber diets, so the champ likely acted wisely in changing his eating habits after finally getting correctly diagnosed.
"Basically for years I was surviving on meat and potatoes," Lesnar said. "When the greens came by, I kept passing them."
Those of us who aren't much for divine intervention prefer to think that the change in diet, coupled with the antibiotics Lesnar said doctors put him on, had more to do with his recovery than the power of positive thinking.
But whatever the reason, Brock is back. And so is the attitude. Love it or hate it, MMA fans.
Something tells me you probably already do.
