Paul Heyman claims Brock Lesnar would still be UFC champion at 49 if not for diverticulitis

Paul Heyman believes Brock Lesnar would still be the UFC heavyweight champion today, at 49, if diverticulitis had not cut his mixed martial arts career short. Lesnar's long-time WWE manager and advocate made the claim in a recent interview with Graham Bensinger on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, in a clip that circulated on social media on Thursday, October 29, and was picked up by Fightful, MMA News and Bloody Elbow.

What Heyman said

Asked about his relationship with Lesnar, Heyman called the former UFC and WWE champion "the greatest athlete on the face of the planet" and argued that he still does not get the credit he deserves for two reasons.

"The only reason why he doesn't get the credit he deserves is, number one, there is a preconceived notion of what a professional wrestler is. Number two, because diverticulitis robbed him of so much more great athletic accomplishment," Heyman said, according to Fightful's transcription.

He then went much further. "If he didn't have diverticulitis, he would've never been defeated in UFC. Never. He'd still be champion today at 49. There's nobody on this planet that could hang with him, no one. No one would get out of the first round with him, there's no way."

How Lesnar's UFC run actually went

The record does not fully match the claim. As MMA News pointed out, Heyman's "never defeated" line skips one fight: Lesnar lost his UFC debut to Frank Mir in 2008, before his illness. He avenged that defeat in the rematch at UFC 100.

In between, Lesnar won the UFC heavyweight title from Randy Couture at UFC 91 in 2008, stopping the veteran in the second round only four fights into his MMA career. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis in 2009, returned to beat Shane Carwin at UFC 116 and then lost the belt to Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 in October 2010, a first-round finish that Bloody Elbow describes as a turning point for the heavyweight division. Lesnar retired after a loss to Alistair Overeem in 2011.

He made one more appearance in the Octagon, beating Mark Hunt at UFC 200 in 2016, but that result was overturned to a no contest after he failed a drug test.

Lesnar did get a measure of revenge on Velasquez in a different setting. The two met again at WWE's Crown Jewel event in 2019, where Lesnar won in just over two minutes.

Rogan's take and Lesnar's retirement

Heyman is not the only voice to suggest Lesnar's ceiling in MMA was higher than his results show. According to Bloody Elbow, Joe Rogan has said Lesnar could have been the greatest of all time had he committed to the sport at an earlier age.

In the same Bensinger interview, Heyman also recalled Lesnar's attempt to make the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings after leaving WWE in 2004. Heyman claimed the Vikings were reluctant to release Lesnar's testing numbers because they feared the media would think they were a WWE stunt, and said Lesnar arrived at training camp still recovering from a motorcycle crash in which he fractured his pelvis, tore his groin and broke his jaw.

Lesnar, now 49, retired from in-ring competition at WWE SummerSlam in August, losing to Oba Femi in his final match.

Bold claim, untestable answer

Whether a healthy Lesnar would have held off Velasquez and the generations of heavyweights that followed is impossible to prove. What is not in dispute is how quickly he rose: from UFC debutant to heavyweight champion within the same year, and one of the promotion's biggest pay-per-view stars. For Heyman, that is enough to put him above anyone the division has produced since.