Cain Velasquez has revealed how Daniel Cormier admitted that he wasn’t too keen on a fight with Brock Lesnar.

Velasquez ended Lesnar’s reign as UFC heavyweight champion when they met in October of 2010 at UFC 121. The fight scored over 1million buys on pay-per-view, and marked the last time that the former WWE star was atop the sport.

How would a prime Brock Lesnar fare in the UFC heavyweight division today?

After being retired by Alistair Overeem and battling diverticulitis, Lesnar returned in 2016 at UFC 200 and teased a fight with Cormier for his heavyweight title in July of 2018. However, Velasquez has now revealed that such a matchup was not always top of his teammate’s priorities.

Daniel Cormier didn’t fancy Brock Lesnar fight, says Cain Velasquez

When 2018 rolled around, Daniel Cormier likely had the confidence of having watched Brock Lesnar be stopped twice, as well as failing a drug test for his UFC return. But when Cain Velasquez was fighting ‘The Beast’ while the Olympian was coming through in Strikeforce, it was a different discussion.

“He’s a freak of an athlete,” Velasquez told the Shawn Ryan Show. “My coaches and I knew that we had the recipe, but I could see everyone else. Even Daniel tells me later, he’s like, ‘Man, when you fought him, I didn’t tell you, but I was just like, I don’t want to be fighting that guy.’

“Just how he looks, he’s a freak athlete. He played in the NFL [on a practice squad], national champion wrestler, big dude, 265lb weight limit but he probably cut who knows how much to make that. He was pure muscle, that’s not me.

“I knew everyone around me was like ‘he’s going to go fight him? He’s going to go and die’. Then standing in front of him, this is a massive dude right here. Even though he doesn’t like the exchange, he has power. So you get hit with that, it’s not going to be good. You’ve still got to be cautious everywhere.”