When Brock Lesnar blew the MMA world away by announcing his return to the UFC against Mark Hunt, it was assumed that the battle would be the United States vs. New Zealand. With Reebok’s long and storied history of mistakes on UFC fight kits (wrong countries, misspelled names) many assumed that was another in a long line of Reebok screwups, but, it turns out that there’s a good reason that Brock’s walkout kit is emblazoned with the Canadian maple leaf — he lives in Canada, and he wants to represent the country come UFC 200.
This makes sense, considering the South Dakota-born Brock moved from his usual Minnesota training grounds to Saskatchewan a few years ago to live out his days in his preferred environment — a farm. He told ESPN recently, “I love my farm. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” Now here we are, with the biggest representation of Canada in the UFC or fight sports in general since GSP. (Sorry, Rory MacDonald.)
Naturally, the Premier (governor for us in the States) of Saskatchewan, is all-in on Brock being the Canada’s extremely large and scary adopted son (even if Brock doesn’t like Canadian healthcare).
Fighting out of Maryfield, Saskatchewan and making news worldwide, @BrockLesnar. All the best at #UFC200 my friend. https://t.co/ecHvGHU9s0
— Brad Wall (@BradWall306) June 7, 2016
Brock will always be Brock, and Brock does what he wants. Now the next question is if he’s fine with Reebok’s fighter pay scale. With only seven UFC fights to his record, Brock is slated to get paid a measly $5,000 for his UFC 200 appearance.