Western State College of Colorado

Shane Carwin believes he was just one solid shot away from finishing UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar at UFC 116 last Saturday night. One solid shot from ditching his “fake” belt and become the undisputed heavyweight champ.

One problem, his body didn’t agree with his tactics.

Carwin went all out for the better part of the first round, but as the opening stanza wound down, so did his body... it started shutting down. It wasn’t a matter of gassing out, unable to breathe; it was a matter of his body literally seizing up, not responding to what his mind was telling it to do.

“We don’t want it to come off sounding like an excuse. Shane had the 100-percent best camp he’s ever had coming into a fight and it shouldn’t diminish Brock’s victory in any way,” Carwin’s manager, Jason Genet, told MMAWeekly.com.

“But what happened, what caused the shutdown, was lactic acidosis. It just comes from exploding like he was doing, not properly breathing, and not having your body prepared for it.”

In laymen’s terms, Carwin was pushing himself to such an extreme in trying to finish Lesnar with his relentless ground and pound that the lactic acid that built up in his muscles reached a level that was too much for his body to handle, thus it started to shutdown.

Carwin does have Bronchitis now, but Genet says that likely happened as a result of the hardships placed on his body from the fight. He wasn’t ill going into the fight.

Knowing he was in dire straights the way his body was, Carwin went out in round two to land a fight ending blow and get out of there. While that was noble of him, Genet says there was just no way it could happen.

“Even though he said he was going out to land a strike, it was over in the corner. Normally in the corner is when your body begins to recover and that wasn't happening. His body was getting worse.”

Genet says it wasn’t a case of gassing out due to cardio. Carwin’s issue was more on the level of a medical condition than that, but he does maintain that it is something that can be altered.

“You can solve that issue with special diet, you can change it with training techniques, and you can train it with supplements,” he said. “We've already got a guy that's gonna be working with Shane to develop some things to help make some training adjustments.”

He wanted to be clear though, as disappointed as they are that Carwin didn’t walk away with UFC gold around his waist, there are no excuses.

“It's not an excuse, as far as Shane is concerned, it's just another way that you can lose a fight. Shane's just happy that now he knows and can do something to work on it.”