Brock Lesnar Leaving WWE for UFC After WrestleMania 34

UFC president Dana White said on Wednesday that Brock Lesnar will return to the UFC.

“Yeah, Brock Lesnar’s coming back,” White said on UFC Tonight. “I don’t know when, but yes he is.”

Speculation raged more when MMA reporter Ariel Helwani, who has had Paul Heyman as a guest on his “MMA Hour” show, tweeted that Lesnar will be returning to the UFC after WrestleMania 34 this Sunday.

“According to multiple sources, this isn’t promoter talk from White,” Helwani wrote. “UFC is confident Lesnar will be back after his WWE duties are wrapped up on Sunday. A deal is in place. Key now is to finalize it.”

Lesnar, who has been the WWE Universal Champion for more than one year, is scheduled to defend that championship on Sunday night against Roman Reigns. There has long been speculation that Reigns was going to beat Lesnar for the title on Sunday, and these reports just four days prior to WrestleMania 34 seem to be backing that up.

Lesnar still has big hurdle to jump en route to a UFC return, however. He has competed in almost two years (UFC 200 in 2016), and after beating Mark Hunt, the decision was later changed to a no-contest because Lesnar failed a pair (that’s right … two!) drug tests. He was suspended one year and fined $250,000, but he only served six months of his suspension before retiring in February 2017, which took him out of the testing protocol.

The 40-year-old will have to re-enter the testing protocol and serve the remainder of his suspension; even worse, he’s now on the USADA’s radar.

If true, despite the common assumption that Reigns would win the title on Sunday night, this is still a pretty big blow to one of WrestleMania 34‘s biggest matches. This is just another reason why the Lesnar-Reigns match cannot close out the show. The guy the fans don’t respect winning the title over the guy who everyone knows is leaving would be a disaster.

Quite frankly, whether or not it closes the show, this match has the potential to be a complete and total dud.

Lesnar had a failure of a match against Bill Goldberg at WrestleMania 20. Why was it a failure? Both men were on their way out of WWE, and everyone knew it.

What’s different this time around? Lesnar’s leaving, and the guy staying, the fans can’t stand.

Sounds like a disaster’s brewing in New Orleans.