Brock Lesnar revealed that his transition to the Octagon was nearly halted before it began because Dana White wanted “nothing to do with him.”
After his initial phone calls went unreturned, Lesnar took matters into his own hands in 2007. Lesnar revealed he bought four tickets to UFC 74 at the MGM Grand, where Randy Couture was defending the heavyweight title against Gabriel Gonzaga. As soon as the main event ended, Lesnar ran toward the Octagon, and grabbed Dana White to introduce himself. “I told him, ‘I’m the real deal, give me a shot.” While White was initially annoyed, the instant pay-per-view metrics from his debut against Frank Mir—forced the UFC to realize he was their biggest draw.
“Dana White wanted nothing to do with me. No, no. He wouldn’t return my phone calls. Yeah, so, what happened was, I fought at the LA Colosseum for K-1 Dynamite, and then I wanted to get into the big leagues. And there was only one big league at the time, and it was the UFC. So, my team reached out and wanted to do something with the UFC.
“This is the stuff you have to do. I bought four nosebleed tickets to the MGM. Randy Couture was headlining against Gabriel Gonzaga for the heavyweight championship. I sat there in the stands through the entire event, and as soon as Randy won that fight, I scaled the security and ran to the octagon and grabbed Dana. I introduced myself. I said, ‘I’m Brock Lesnar.’ And we went to the back, and he says, ‘Well, listen, I’ll give you a shot.’
“So he gave me a one-fight deal. I said take a gamble on me, and so he gave me a one-shot deal, and I lost that fight against Frank Mir. I went back to the locker room, and I was like I screwed it up. And Dana comes in, and he’s like, because they know the pay-per-view buys instantly, right? So, the numbers must have been really, really good. At that point, Dana is like, ‘Nope, you’re not done.’ And then the next day, we negotiated a real contract,” Lesnar said