[Updated] Brock Lesnar's future still up in the air, is he holding out hope that he can appear at WrestleMania?

It's exactly two months since Brock Lesnar lost the UFC Heavyweight Championship to Cain Velasquez and played his part in a post match confrontation angle with The Undertaker at UFC 121.  Even now, his future is still up in the air and we're still no closer to knowing for certain whether his next appearance will be in a UFC cage or a WWE ring.

What we do know for certain is that he won't be a coach on next season's The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show, despite Dana White floating his name as a possibility just ten days ago.  As Dave Meltzer confirmed in the December 27th Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Lesnar refused to do the show when asked.  It was always going to be a long shot given the time he would have to spend in front of the cameras and away from his home and family, but Lesnar is probably in no mood to do any favours for Dana White at the moment given Dana's stubborn refusal to allow him to pick up a comparatively easy seven figure pay check for participating in a scripted sports entertainment spectacle.

Yes, as the rest of the MMA media may be too ashamed to cover, Meltzer did indeed make perfectly clear last week in the December 20th Observer that Lesnar still wants to participate at next year's WrestleMania.  What was more surprising is that apparently Vince McMahon still thinks he can get Lesnar for the show.  Meltzer went on to explain why on his subscribers only message board:

He's Vince McMahon and Dana White likes to stay on Vince McMahon's good side.  And Vince likes to stay on Dana White's good side.  And he thinks he can make his wife a senator, so making a deal for Brock Lesnar doesn't sound impossible.

I think Vince should just be grateful that Dana hasn't booked a PPV on WrestleMania weekend again, after Vince orchestrated a worked shoot angle on Dana's turf without his knowledge.  This is something Dana is simply not going to budge on unless lawyers get involved and his hand is forced.

So what's the latest state of play in this promotional love triangle, courtesy of this week's Observers:

• Meltzer suggested that UFC may need to pull a rabbit out of a hat for their own domed super show, UFC 129 at Toronto's Rogers Centre on April 30th 2011, and that a Lesnar fight could be that rabbit.
• As reported earlier by Meltzer, all of WWE's other WrestleMania celebrity ideas are almost certainly dead in the water, so Vince is presumably still banking on Lesnar being able to do the show.  One idea that is now impossible, and thus Meltzer can confirm the name of, was NBA mega heel LeBron James.  That idea is out because the Miami Heat has a basketball game on the same day as Mania.

Update: “I know too much about Brock right now” – Dave Meltzer on Christmas Observer radio. He said that there’s two Brock’s, the Brock who wants it real bad or the Brock who’s looking for an exit strategy, who’s the businessman, who’s rich, happy and now doesn’t want to get hurt. And (the latter) that’s the reality, as if Brock really wanted to beat Cain Velasquez he’d be either going to Holland (to train) or importing Holland to Minnesota, not spending all his time hunting. Also he would be calling Dana White asking for fights, instead of failing to return Dana’s phone calls.