The good, the bad and Brock Lesnar

The Baddest Man on the Planet was a moniker of necessity invented for Mike Tyson, who spent a good deal of his underachieving career without a real title.

Turned out Tyson wasn’t nearly so bad — bad as in shut your mouth, bad — as he was iconic: straight outta Brooklyn, a hip-hop lyric brought to life. Perhaps that’s why it still seems odd, at least for those of a certain age, to consider the successor to his mythical title.

Brock Lesnar, the UFC’s heavyweight champ, and probably the biggest pay-per-view attraction in combat sports, is another kind of archetype: the Super White Boy, from rural Minnesota by way of South Dakota. Pale and gargantuan, Lesnar has endorsement deals for beef jerky and ammunition, and muscles on his eyebrows.

At 6-foot-3, sporting a full beard for hunting season, he’ll show up a little under 270 to fight Cain Velasquez, a slight underdog, Saturday night at the Honda Center. But Lesnar is more than a look. The years he spent indentured to Vince McMahon at the WWE have served him well. A lot of guys can fight. But how many can really play the heel?

Still, you wonder, as you do about anyone who profits from playing heel or the hero, how much is authentic?

“I love it out here,” he says, with a quality I take to be practiced, if deadpan, disdain.

“You hate it here,” I say.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he says. “I love it.”

Lesnar and his people — about eight of them, trainers, sparring partners and managers — have just arrived in the Green Room at the Disney Concert Hall after braving traffic in the rain. Soon, he’ll go out for the final press conference, a performance that assumes he’ll be in Baddest Man character.

“It ain’t about any of that,” Lesnar tells me. “I look at this as my job. I just enjoy the fighting. The bells and whistles? At the end of the day, you got to do some of it, the lights and the cameras . . .”

“But you’re good at it,” I tell him.

“I don’t think I’m good at it,” he says. “I think I suck.”

MMA isn’t like boxing. Sooner rather than later, everybody loses, a difficult proposition for anyone trying to maintain his Baddest Man designation. In fact, a victory Saturday would make Lesnar the first UFC heavyweight champ to successfully defend his title in three consecutive bouts.

Of course, after only six pro fights — five of them in the UFC — no one really knows how good he is, or may yet be. But he’s the best draw, for sure. According to Heavy.com, Lesnar’s last three pay-per-views — all cards he’s headlined — have gotten buys of 1 million, 1.6 million and, after he was gone almost a year with diverticulitis, 1.16 million. In other words, his talent for promotion definitely doesn’t suck. It’s money, which brings me to the subject of his Lucchese boots.

“Gators,” he says proudly.

Actually, he’s probably exaggerating. I have to say no more than one full-size carnivorous reptile was sacrificed for the production of Lesnar’s kicks.

“How much?” I ask.

“I don’t know. My wife does the shopping.”

His wife? That would be something, seeing Mrs. Lesnar at the mall. He’s married to Rena Mero, better known as Sable, one of the WWE’s all-time hotties. They have two young sons and each has kids from previous relationships. But rarely, if ever, is the family seen at these events. Actually, Lesnar himself disappears between fights. For such a big persona, he makes himself very scarce.

“Guess the less you give somebody the more they want it,” he says. “Maybe one day they’ll figure that out.”

Still, in this age of reality shows, where every aspiring demi-star is willing to pimp out his or her family, what’s best about Lesnar is this absolute line he draws. There’s the persona and the patriarch, and he’s determined that the two shall never meet.

“It’s my life,” he says. “There’s so much television and Twitter and Facebook. We don’t do any of that stuff. There’s no privacy left.”

This from a guy who lives in Alexandria, Minn., wherever that is.

“Absolutely the most important thing to me,” he says. “My family.”

Sure, but then again, maybe the idea of Lesnar as a family man would diminish the requisite menace needed to maintain one’s image as the planet’s Baddest Man. "What would people see if they saw you at home?" I ask.

“I’m actually a Mormon,” he says. “I got six wives and 15 kids.”

Beat.

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” he says. “But my kids are my kids. I don’t need to show them off to anybody. I don’t want them to be ‘the sons or daughters of Brock Lesnar.’ ”

“How often do you read the Bible?” I ask.

“Not as often as I should, but enough. Couple times a week. 'Till I get bored.” Now he starts really thinking about it. “I don’t know. An hour? Fifteen minutes?” Another beat, then he catches himself. “What’s it to you?”

“It’s important.”

“To me it is,” he says. “But my relationship with my family and my relationship with God, the key word is mine.”

We talk some high school football. Lesnar didn’t play. He just rumbled and kicked ass under the stands during the games. Most of the time, he didn’t even know which team won.

Not so for Cain Velasquez, he says: “I’m going to win Saturday night.”

“How?”

“I’m a f------ beast,” says the Baddest Man. “That’s what I do.”