Opinion: Eat, Sleep, Haunt, Repeat

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One of the biggest stars -- if not the biggest -- in MMA is competing this weekend, but he will not be fighting for the UFC. When the Octagon is erected inside the SaskTel Centre, he won't be anywhere near it, which is even a tad ironic given that he has previously proclaimed his love for the province of Saskatchewan and the hunting Canada's prairie land provides.

It's understandable, though. He might still be one of the biggest names in this sport, but Brock Lesnar is no longer a fighter. This Sunday, while thrilling blue-chip prospects Max Holloway and Charles “do Bronx” Oliveira try to vanquish the other in hopes of stepping into the spotlight at 145 pounds, they will do so under Lesnar's gargantuan shadow, as “The Beast Incarnate” tries to avoid a vengeance-fueled Tombstone Piledriver from The Undertaker at WWE “SummerSlam.”

He might be a former UFC heavyweight champion and a former MMA fighter, but that doesn't make Lesnar a “former MMA star.” Bizarre as it might be, Lesnar benefits more explicitly from his own absence more than perhaps any entertainer I can think of. If distance makes the heart grow fonder, Lesnar has mastered the art of walking into the forest, just beyond sight, inciting the public to call his name, hoping he'll come back to enthuse us again like a family pet back from the beyond.

However, Lesnar's not a dog and at this point, for MMA purposes; I'm not even sure he's a man. Lesnar is a ghost, a specter floating above the cage, a supernatural opportunist who knows just how to rap our windows and rattle our chains.

As mentioned in the opening sentence, Lesnar is not a “former MMA star” but quite possibly still the biggest star the sport has, in absentia or not. He turned seven Octagon appearances into approximately six million pay-per-view buys and is indirectly responsible for millions more, given that his ascent to UFC gold is the most quintessential example this sport has of a rising tide lifting all boats. In this metaphor, Lesnar is not only the biggest boat, but he is the moon, as well, responsible for the rising tide itself. Lesnar's impact on the sport, as brief as his tenure was, still resonates. It is exceedingly difficult to have too many in-depth MMA conversations in 2015 without somehow referencing the UFC's 2009-2011 salad days and overall boom period.

Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor might be the biggest active stars the company has, and in Rousey's case, she has galvanized non-fight fans from all kinds of niche interest groups in a way no one ever has. On the other hand, Lesnar headlined three consecutive events that garnered over one million PPV buys and, more incredibly, has turned his preference for invisibility into an amplifier for his star power, which is as every bit as counterintuitive as it is incredibly impressive.

Lesnar hasn't fought for almost four years, and when he last did, Alistair Overeem gave him a brutal medieval flailing. Considering that his first WWE tenure ended with him being booed out of Madison Square Garden and suing the company to get out of a no-compete clause, that he had flopped as IWGP heavyweight champion in New Japan and that he was pummeled into MMA retirement in two lopsided defeats to Overeem and Cain Velasquez, you'd assume there would have been a group of sarcastic well-wishers bidding Lesnar adieu, watching him dejectedly head back into the Midwestern wilderness.

Instead, Lesnar's surprising degree of MMA success creates a new, more “authentic” wrinkle to his pro-wrestling persona, allowing him to become the WWE's biggest attraction and heavyweight champion while only appearing on television sporadically and working even fewer dates. The insane, inhumane WWE travel schedule that drove Lesnar to hate pro-wrestling in the first place was no longer even a consideration, because all of a sudden, Lesnar was 10 times bigger than when he was “The Next Big Thing.”

Ironically, it was the MMA realm, where without the explicit, kayfabe-style helpings of his homeboy Paul Heyman, Lesnar really evolved as a classic carny. Lesnar is infinitely better now on a microphone, as a showman, as an entertainer who can use choreographed violence to put an audience in the palm of his hand, and it's hard to not see the obvious evolution through his UFC tenure, where he was on his own, with no Heyman. Yet, he delivered iconic, idiosyncratic weirdness when he spoke in MMA. Pulling horseshoes out of Frank Murrrrr's ass, beating him with them, killing the UFC's beer sponsor, Bud Light, in favor of Coooooooooors Light and talking about mounting his wife. In a sport where most folks are doing poor facsimiles of pro-wrestlers, Lesnar got to show folks how it was really done.

Now that he's gone, having evolved into the most breathtaking, compelling iteration of the “monster heel” archetype in pro-wrestling history, the MMA world, a large portion of which mocked and scorned Lesnar while he was an active fighter, quietly wishes he'd swing back around someday for some sort of multi-bazillion dollar circus. Lesnar is a beautiful, complicated ex-lover; MMA folks may not outright pine for his return, but if we stumbled across one another one night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, old passions could rekindle.

It's not just the longing, either. Lesnar is not just an apparition; he's a poltergeist; he's Patrick Swayze helping Demi Moore with some spooky pottery. For a guy who is overwhelmingly unlikely to ever fight again, Lesnar has the MMA media landscape on lockdown. To the heart of serious, important MMA discussion, Anthony Johnson's disgusting social media screed was easily the most salient story this week; but what was the biggest, hottest, most inescapable story that everyone just had to throw their two cents in on, myself included?

Well? Who ya got, Vince McMahon or Dana White?

Lesnar's Tuesday morning appearance on ESPN's “SportsCenter” to hype the first-ever four-hour “SummerSlam” was a master class in “pro-wrestling in public.” Lesnar's legitimate amateur wrestling and MMA credentials made his gimmick more “real” and, in turn, he comes off like a legitimate athlete in spite of the fact he entered the set with his trademark bouncing and jumping, sans pyrotechnics. This man is on America's definitive cable sports program talking about how he ended The Undertaker's streak, as if that's an actual thing, and it doesn't seem preposterous.

Better still, as soon as MMA subjects are broached, Lesnar finds that special way to be both real and heel. MMA? “Ehhhh, same thing as pro-wrestling, but Vince is a little better than Dana.” How about Ronda? “She's a beast, but damn, her division sucks.” Provocative but not cartoonish, brusque without being dickish. He's never going to fight again, but Lesnar still gets to be MMA's celebrity of the week, single-handedly pushing whatever narratives he sees fit.

Impossibly, this farmland freakshow with a phallic trench knife tattooed on his chest has become a master of promotional nuance.

In February, Lesnar showed up at UFC 184, and his presence alone ended up being a story on par with Rousey positively humiliating Cat Zingano in 14 seconds. After walking out on an edition of “Monday Night Raw,” showing up on a UFC PPV again gave Lesnar the opportunity to fuse worlds of the fake and the real, leading MMA and pro-wrestling media to ignite in speculation about his immediate future. A few weeks later, he was back with the WWE like nothing ever happened, and the MMA world tut-tutted itself for entertaining the idea he would have come back, because ghosts aren't real. Really, we were just duped by a shockingly shrewd Lesnar.

Lesnar even wore a three-piece suit to UFC 184, just to give you that unconscious vibe that he was there on business. This is a guy that used to come to UFC press conferences in DeathClutch T-shirts and/or button-down woodland camouflage, but all of a sudden, he has a suit and a vest on? IS BROCK COMING BACK, GUYS?

Lesnar -- and by extension, his confidante and headshrinker Heyman -- have been psyching folks out longer than you think. This big “SummerSlam” main event on Sunday? Don't forget that the night Velasquez drove Lesnar into an ad hoc break-dancing routine at UFC 121 and took the heavyweight title, Lesnar exited the Octagon, only to walk into a surreal staredown with ... The Undertaker. Instantly, the MMA and pro-wrestling media alike were alight. It suddenly didn't even matter so much anymore than Lesnar just got absolutely mauled by Velasquez.

“What was that? What just happened? What did we see? You saw that, though, right? Did he say something? I couldn't hear it! Did you hear it?” It was, unsurprisingly, like they saw a ghost.