Love him or loathe him, Lesnar is much-watch UFC

It was true the night of Ultimate Fighting Championship 100, when Brock Lesnar knocked out Frank Mir and then addressed a booing crowd at Mandalay Bay with both middle fingers while stating he might celebrate winning the heavyweight title by drinking a Coors Light and getting on top of his wife.

It is true today, seven months after Lesnar had 12 inches of colon removed to help overcome serious problems with diverticulitis that threatened whether he would fight again.

When it comes to the UFC, Lesnar matters.

He's the one people want to see.

"For all the criticism Brock takes from some of the fans, it would be pretty damn boring if Brock Lesnar wasn't in the heavyweight division," UFC president Dana White said. "It's exciting. It's fun when he's here. His fights are exciting, and he's a guy who has accomplished a lot of things."

He also is chasing a championship belt lost last year, a journey that continues tonight against Alistair Overeem in the main event of UFC 141 at the MGM Grand Garden.

Lesnar sells tickets and pay per views in a sport that, while globally popular and having long ago made an impact within the mainstream, has had to battle the idea that it is losing some appeal as expectations rise among fans for consistently great cards.

Lesnar on any card is good business.

He can be as controversial as he is amusing, a behemoth whose theatrics are as much grown from his days in the artificial land of World Wrestling Entertainment as anything.

He also is fortunate to have another chance.

The stomach illness that lasted 18 months and at one point caused him to lose 40 pounds in 11 days was far more serious than any submission, which is why some questioning Lesnar's desire to compete is ridiculous. You don't recover from such an ordeal and work hard enough to return to fighting form without a profound level of passion.

Say what you want about Lesnar -- and you pretty much could run the gamut of critical views and not be far off -- but to doubt his craving for competition makes no sense.

"For (expletive)'s sake, what do I have to go through?" Lesnar said. "What do I have to do? I don't know. I love what I do, and I'm here. I'm not ready for (fighting) to be done. I've made a little money here and there, but at the end of the day, this is my identity. It's who I am. It's what I want to be."

He seemed as much at ease as he ever could be during a media gathering Tuesday, still stingy with his time and flanked by enablers with bizarre haircuts who can't possibly be as important as they want you to believe.

Lesnar talked about Christmas, about his best presents being good health and watching his 9-year-old daughter catch a 3½-pound walleye while ice fishing, about spending the summer on his farm in rural Minnesota and growing wheat and canola, about when he sits around and his mind turns to those things he deems important, it's usually about hunting white-tailed deer and not his next opponent.

"I can spend 10 hours in my tractor driving up and down a field cultivating," Lesnar said. "People wouldn't last 10 minutes out there, but I go 10 hours listening to the radio and maybe chewing on some sunflower seeds or something."

I wouldn't say he has gone all soft on anyone, but it's obvious Lesnar's travels through a frightening medical condition have allowed him a different perspective on things. He always remains a question or two from morphing into a foul mood and still does as he pleases when it comes to rarely promoting the sport in which he is so valuable to the bottom line.

Still, the company needs him.

Overeem will make his UFC debut against Lesnar and yet is the betting favorite, a former champion from Strikeforce and K-1 whose training camp included drug-testing issues that became more the story than how he might force Lesnar into a standup fight.

Lesnar has dealt with his own accusations into performance-enhancing drugs and, well, having come from professional wrestling, he isn't foolish enough to cast any stones toward Overeem's side of the octagon.

"I wasn't even aware of any issue with him until told about it about a week ago," Lesnar said. "It's part of being (in the) spotlight and with the Internet and everything nowadays, and social media -- everybody knows everything. It's part of the lifestyle. It comes with the territory.

"Now, it's time to fight."

And for it, the UFC is grateful.

The guy who matters, who sells tickets and pay per views better than anyone in the sport, is back.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.