Brock Lesnar looked back on his loss to Cain Velasquez and his battle with diverticulitis while with UFC. 

Lesnar opened up on his post-WWE career in MMA – prior to his return in 2012 – during an interview on “Spittin’ Chiclets,” recalling his early career when the UFC wasn’t interested, when he did sign and fights the likes of Frank Mir and Randy Couture to become Heavyweight Champion, but also the losses he sustained towards the end of his run before eventually returning to WWE. 

“I wasn’t ever really scared of anybody,” he said. “But I felt threatened, there’s certain threats… Cain Velasquez, he handed me my a** in Anaheim. But I think, for me, going through diverticulitis really took a lot of fight out of me. I almost died with that disease and afterwards it changed my life and it changed my mentality towards the sport.”

Lesnar lost to Velasquez via knock-out to drop the UFC Heavyweight Championship in October 2010. He returned over a year later having had surgery to treat his diverticulitis, removing 12 inches of his colon, to face Alistair Overeem. That fight ended in round one after Overeem punished the torso of Lesnar, delivering a kick to drop him and punches until the referee called the fight. 

Lesnar retired from MMA and returned to WWE after that fight, save for a one-off return against Mark Hunt at UFC 200 in 2016; he won that fight on the night, though the result was overturned to a no-contest after he failed USADA testing.