As noted, while still not officially announced by either side, Brock Lesnar is reportedly close to inking a deal that would see him return to the octagon for a fight at next month’s UFC 200 pay-per-view. According to reports – and it’s worth noting that these reports originated as a rumor, albeit one from a respected source – Lesnar had a clause added into his WWE contract earlier this year, prior to WrestleMania, that would allow him to accept a fight offer from UFC while maintaining his current three-year deal with WWE.
This falls even more into the “rumor” category, but there are talks that Lesnar actually held out Vince McMahon for more money before his WrestleMania match with Dean Ambrose, and that as a part of a compromise between the two, his WWE contract was amended to allow him to accept an offer for a future UFC fight.
The interesting thing here is that while UFC stands to gain a massive amount of buys for their already packed 200th pay-per-view event, which had been seriously crippled by the loss of McGregor/Diaz, WWE stands to gain very little outside of the unintentional cross-promotion to MMA fans that might want to see what he’s been up to. While it’s plausible Vince might have allowed Lesnar to fight for UFC to appease one of his biggest drawing stars right before the most crucial event of the wrestling season, it seems unlikely that he would allow a star of that magnitude to appear on what will be promoted as the biggest UFC event in history, without wanting something in return.
