For better or worse, Lesnar key to UFC

Well, at least the time away didn't ruin Brock Lesnar's appetite for controversy. This can be a good thing for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. You can market a despised heavyweight champion as much as a beloved one.

Lesnar will test that theory more than any other fighter in UFC history.

He is healthy enough to fight again, which on the surface is good news for a sport that has been missing some of its stars and suffering at the gate.

You figure Lesnar's biggest worry now is not the serious bout of diverticulitis that forced him from the cage for months and at one point put his fighting career and, according to him, life in jeopardy but rather the thought he might need help the next time he visits Canada.

Do you remember the scene in "Rocky" where Paulie allows the fighter to train in a meat locker? Something tells me if the Canadians can round up enough willing bodies to actually move the behemoth Lesnar, his next stop across the border might be hanging out with all the sides of beef his stomach will no longer allow him to consume in such large quantities.

"I'm a carnivore," Lesnar said. "I'm not a big fan of PETA. I'm a member of the NRA, and whatever I kill, I basically eat."

Wait. It gets so much better.

Lesnar on Wednesday had a conference call to announce his return to a heavyweight division that has always trailed other weight classes in star power and interest, and in the process he managed to condemn Canada's health care system as one from "a third-world country," speak against the president's health care reform package and somehow throw the health care systems of Thailand and Puerto Rico under the bus, which you know will cause natives there to wonder what in the world they did to be included.

"I'm a conservative Republican speaking on behalf of Americans," Lesnar said. "I'm glad to see the state of Massachusetts has a Republican senator up there now. I love Canada. I own property there. It has some of the best people and hunting in the world. But I wasn't at the right medical facility. I had to get out of there. Our health care system is a little radical but is still the best in the world. I don't want health care reform. I don't believe in socialism."

The funny part: Lesnar prefaced his comments by saying he didn't want to get political.

But this is him. He speaks about health care reform in the United States from the perspective you'd expect a wealthy athlete to offer, and he makes broad, sweeping opinions about another country's entire health care system when he was reportedly seen at a medical center in a remote northern town of not 6,000 people that serves as an outreach of Winnipeg.

In a weird, twisted way, this is part of why he is the sport's biggest draw. He is Notre Dame football to the mixed martial arts fan. Love him. Hate him. People pay to watch Lesnar.

You can't discount the power of an entertaining heavyweight champion, whether you support his beliefs or are the out-of-work family man hoarding pennies to cover medical insurance premiums and would like nothing more than for Lesnar's next opponent go all Rocky Balboa on the champ's face.

Lesnar won the heavyweight title with a second-round knockout of Frank Mir at UFC 100 in July and promptly addressed the Mandalay Bay crowd with both middle fingers. The heat began to rise that evening as to the lengths he could be marketed. Then he fell seriously ill.

However he healed, from the time spent at a Canadian hospital that he fled like Usain Bolt from a starting block, to a facility in North Dakota and then the Mayo Clinic, to losing 40 pounds, to the antibiotics and holistic measures and more disciplined eating habits he insists saved him from major surgery and wearing a colostomy bag, to what he and UFC president Dana White were terming a miracle Wednesday, Lesnar is prepared to fight again.

That will probably happen in July against the winner or Mir-Shane Carwin, scheduled for March 27 in Newark, N.J.

"I know one thing," Lesnar said. "All those guys are (bleeping) their pants right now. Brock Lesnar is back."

For better or worse.

There is ample evidence on both sides.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. On "The Sports Scribes" on KDWN-AM (720) and www.kdwn.com.