UPDATE: UFC denies Brock Lesnar has re-entered USADA pool

*UPDATE* According to UFC Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance Jeff Novitzky, Lesnar “is not currently enrolled in the USADA testing pool, nor has there been any inquiry on his part to do so.”

Brock Lesnar may be returning to the UFC again, again.

The WWE superstar had a pretty successful run between 2008 and 2011, capturing the UFC heavyweight championship despite suffering from diverticulitis. He returned in 2016 for a fight with Mark Hunt that he originally won by decision ... until he tested positive for the estrogen blocker clomiphene. That earned him a yearlong suspension from USADA, which was originally set to end on July 9th. Now just days since then, we have rumors of a return.

There's a couple various versions of this rumor floating around. One has Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman showing up at the UFC headquarters recently to talk about a return. Another rumor has Brock's return to the UFC being tied to getting Conor McGregor to appear in the WWE. What we can confirm at this moment comes from WWE and UFC insider Dave Meltzer, who has confirmed that Brock Lesnar is back in the USADA testing pool.

There's a decent number of hurdles to cross before a fight involving Brock can happen. If Lesnar thinks he can hop back in like he did for UFC 200, he's mistaken. The UFC and USADA granted Lesnar an exemption from having to spend several months in the USADA testing pool before being allowed to compete and he burned them pretty bad on that, to the point where Mark Hunt is suing the UFC and Brock over the situation.

Currently, athletes that have removed themselves from the USADA testing pool have to spend six months back in and getting tested before they can compete again. There's also the issue of Lesnar's previous suspension, which may not be over yet. His USADA suspension may have been frozen in February with five months to go when Lesnar announced his retirement from the sport and took himself out of the pool. We assume he can serve that final five months concurrent to the six months he has to spend in the pool to compete again, but nothing is confirmed.

But this is one of those cases where there's a lot of smoke, and probably a fire. Lesnar seemed pretty damn happy with how things went after UFC 200, like he wanted to keep fighting. The drug test failure screwed things up, but now that his suspension is ending, who knows? We doubt he'd re-enter the testing pool unless he was serious about another match, so let’s just wait and see how it all plays out.