Ending weeks of speculation about the state of his health and his eventual return to competition, Brock Lesnar finally broke his silence this morning alongside Dana White in an interview with ESPN's "SportsCenter". 

Lesnar used the wrestling skills he honed as a two-time All-American and NCAA heavyweight champion, as well as raw athletic talent and a brutal ground-and-pound attack, to capture the UFC heavyweight belt from Randy Couture at UFC 91 in just his third fight with the organization. Lesnar then successfully defended his title against former champ Frank Mir at UFC 100.

In his SportsCenter interview, Lesnar discussed how what had begun as a diagnosis of mononucleosis while he was training for a planned title defense against Shane Carwin last November, turned out to be a much more serious illness.

"My camp wasn't going well," Lesnar stated. "I missed almost three weeks of training camp. Kept going to the doctor, couldn't find out what the problem was. Finally it was a Monday, and I said to my trainers, I can't do this fight.  I went to the doctor, they diagnosed me with mononucleosis, and I'm like that doesn't sound right to me, I'm pretty sure I had that when I was a kid. I was devastated just to back out of the fight."

Lesnar decided to get away for a while and take a hunting trip to Canada, but he found that his health problems continued to get worse.

"I got up there and still didn't feel right," Lesnar said. "I had a lot of severe stomach pain. And one night I woke up and I was in severe shock, I had a 104 temperature and felt like I was shot in the guts."

After a brief stay in a Canadian hospital, Lesnar decided to return to the United States, where he was treated at Medcenter One in Bismark, North Dakota.

"I take my hat off to this doctor there," a grateful Lesnar confided. "They diagnosed me with diverticulosis, a severe case, and I had a rupture of one of my diverticuli, which means I had a hole in my stomach. So the doctor there put me on antibiotics, put me on pain medication, and wanted me to heal myself. Versus the other side of it was to go in, remove part of my colon, and wear a colostomy bag, and pretty much end my career. I take my hat off to the the doctors there at Medcenter One for saving my life and my career. I was in the hospital for eleven days, no food, no water, fed intravenously, I lost 40 pounds. Got out of the hospital, went home, decided I wanted a second opinion, went down to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Both doctors, in Bismark and at the Mayo Clinic, diagnosed and said that I needed surgery, (and that) I have to have my colon removed, but we can't do it until all of the swelling goes down. So I pretty much had it in my mind that I was going to get surgery and I was going to be out for I didn't know how long. And I didn't want to, if I could beat the odds I was going to do eveything in my power to do that. I went home, I went back in the gym, I got my weight back up, I put about 30 pounds back on, went back into the doctor Jan 5, and a miracle- they were dumbfounded, they couldn't find any signs of any problem in my stomach, it's just a miracle to me. I actually had to go back to the doctor yesterday before I came out here and get another CT scan of my stomach because I just still can't...