Brock Lesnar vs Stephen Neal; 1999 NCAA title match and more

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I’ve never understood the rules or scoring of real wrasslin’ but I’ll watch old school clips of Brock Lesnar any day

Imagine if he had gotten into training MMA immediately after this senior year win. I think we’d be talking about him as the clear cut HW GOAT of our sport

I got to see all 4 of Cael’s titles live. He was like a human cat playing with its food. The 4th title and completion of that 159-0 record was capped off with a 15minute standing ovation and ESPN dragging him back out for an interview to which he said he just wanted to go fishing.

I always think of the mental fortitude of Cael and the difference between him and John Jones. Couldn’t have two more different humans yet both breed excellence!

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Was there for both of those Brock matches too. I happened to be sitting next to Tito’s college wrestling coach from ??? I think it was golden west community college. Tito had started to wrestle for some D1, and stopped pursing that. I was asking the coach about him and wrestling D1 he said, “Tito is going to see how this hole UFC thing pans out”. Lol!

I kept talking to a bunch of the wrestlers on the Minnesota team and telling them Brock should get into MMA, they were all like, yeah…. He’s going to the WWF!

Neither he or Neal wanted to risk losing that match, not the fireworks we all hoped for and he damn near didn’t win that title his senior year.

I have a lot of my own great footage from these tournaments. My dad started shooting footage at the NCAA tournaments in the early 60s so I have a personal archive that covers probably 40+ years NCAA tournaments.

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When Heath fought brock, I got 80 or so of Brock’s matches for them to study. Even got ahold of the patriots wranglers to talk to Neal to get his perspective on Brock’s habits and strength. Was such a great time back then.

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Well he wouldn’t have lost to Ricco, Tim Silvia, Arlovski or Randy. Josh may have given him some trouble early in his career and there’s still the Frank rivalry, but I think he would have had the tools to deal with him at that point. I think he would have had a solid 8 year run as heavy weight champ with maybe a blip or two on his record. Young Brock was just an insane freak at heavy weight.

It’s like if Gable Stevenson came over to MMA right now. Lol! He would basically be DC 20.0 the heavy weight division wouldn’t fucking know what to do with that guy. He would ghost the fuck out of Francis. Gable moves in a way that makes people literally fall on their face.

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Very cool

That was Del Defner. He is a staple
Of the JC Wrestling world in So Cal.

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After Steve Neal lost at 2000 Olympic trials he decided to give football a shot and tried out for the New England Patriots then went on to win 3 Super Bowls guarding Tom Brady

He’s 1 of the few NFL players to walk onto an NFL team without playing in college

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I mean there is this mother fucking unicorn too! This guys story sounds fake if you look it up.

6 x NCAA champ (yeah, you read that right!)

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Sounds right, I’m sure if I look hard enough I could maybe still find his business card. Lol! I just remember him being really nice, older, thin and white hair. Which looks like the individual you mentioned. Nice guy! Funny to think of everything Tito has been through since then. I guess it all worked out better than a wrestling career would have. He had all the wrestling he needed (except maybe not enough for Randy! Lol)

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That match was awesome. Neal later said he could have opened up and scored more but Lesnar was not coming after him and he wanted to force him into making mistakes. If you think it was close, trust me it wasn’t. If you think Lesnar was a freakish athlete, Neal was bigger, just as strong and a better competitor.

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Would have been a better match if Brock had another year under his belt, that was his first year wrestling D1 (I think?). He was more aggressive his senior year for sure. Neal was for sure the better wrestler. And Neal got fucked his sophomore year in the finals, should have been a 3x champ. I love the NCAA tournament, I wish they still invited the champs from the other divisions. I got to get my stuff in order for this year’s tournament!

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Brock was never that good. Outside of John Lockhart from Illinois he was probably the worst NCAA champion at heavyweight in the late 90s/early 00s. He never once even went near the US Open where he would have gotten his ass kicked. He got his ass kicked in juco by Matyushenko who he had 60 or 70 lbs on. He said he never tried to make an Olympic team because there was no money, its really because 5 or 6 guys would have lit him up and he would have been sitting at 5th or 6th on the ladder.

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You are 100% right! I looked and found it! You making that pull is what makes this forum great. And it’s crazy that I still have that guys business card from 22 years ago.

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