Phil CM Punk Brooks fights this Saturday, in Cleveland at UFC 203. He is not ready.

It would be virtually impossible for him to be. His opponent is a mismatch, being over a decade younger yet far more experienced, and healthier.

For his part, Brooks will walk into the cage with less than two years of real martial arts training, a scary history of serious brain and back injuries, and a head of full of steam that has been blown up there by others who have exaggerated his preparation.

Some may be surprised to read that Brooks has under two years of martial arts experience given all the misinformation out there about the former WWE superstar. Let’s briefly set the record straight.

•No, Brooks doesn’t have a Muay Thai background. He sometimes used kicks that look worse than mine as a part of his wrasslin’ shtick. That’s it.

•No, Brooks doesn’t have a real Brazilian jiu-jitsu background. For all that has been made of his training with members of the Gracie family, the reality is flimsy.

Someone who lives 2,000 miles away from you isn’t your coach. At best, Brooks was enrolled in a martial arts correspondence course led by Rener Gracie, the type of which were long ago discredited by real practitioners.

All of this is to say that Brooks walked into Roufusport a year and a half ago, a blank slate. He had no real martial arts experience, indeed he had no competitive sports experience of any kind.

If he were a young kid training hard for even a short period of time in an academy as good as Duke Roufus’, being a tabula rasa could have been a good thing. Brooks, instead, is nearing 40, with a long history of concussions and serious back issues.

He could have taken a decade at Roufusport and still not been ready to fight someone good. And, make no mistake about it, Mickey Gall is good.

The kid is young, big, hard-hitting and slick-moving on the mat. He’s a brown belt to Brooks’ white, and has four MMA fights, one in the UFC, compared to Brooks’ none, all-around.

•Brooks did not move to Milwaukee from Chicago to dedicate himself to training. Real fighters know what it is like to move to another city, state, or even hemisphere to pursue their dreams.

It means leaving behind security, what is familiar and safe. It means tying your fortunes to a crazy leap and burning the ships behind you once you land on new soil.

A millionaire having the luxury of keeping an additional apartment in a nearby city to make his training more convenient doesn’t reflect sacrifice – it embodies privilege and further illustrates that Brooks simply hasn’t gone through the rigors fighters have. I don’t begrudge him for that, I simply know it means he’s given less and has less skin in the game than his UFC 203 opponent – which is never a good thing.

•Brooks hasn’t had been in over 15 fights at Roufusport. Lots of words have been used to describe the play-acting Brooks has done, often for cameras – and fighting is likely the most inaccurate of them all.

Other terms used, like scrimmage (which has no real, historical application in combat sports) and smokers, are likely not even accurate. For those who don’t know, a smoker, is simply an unsanctioned fight.

Often, they occur in gyms or halls, with opposing coaches bringing fighters of theirs and matching them with others, according to weight and experience. Smokers are not sparring – your opponent can and does hit you as hard as they possibly can.

My first two fights were smokers, held at gyms. The lumps on my head and the police shutting down one of them a few fights after mine were a testament to the realness of them.

Having your coach pair you with a teammate in the gym is sparring. What we’ve seen of Brooks’ fights, and smokers, can’t even be honestly even be called sparring, though.

Any experienced fighter knows there are levels of competitive live training with teammates. On the far, most dangerous end is sparring.

Real sparring is hard, in pace, pressure and, often, in impact. Guys and gals get their bells rung in sparring, they injure their ligaments and bones badly in sparring.

What Phil Brooks has done on camera that is called sparring and fighting, is neither – it looks like timing sparring. Timing sparring is a very useful tool that smart gyms use more and more frequently than hard sparring.

During timing sparring, opponents can go for takedowns and submissions, 100%, and connect with strikes at a good clip on one another, but they don’t do so very hard. Timing sparring is the type of work that most fighters should be filling most of their live competitive time with.

At some point or another, however, someone needs to learn how tough they are and develop some grit, and they can only do that through some real sparring rounds. Punk has never competed in sports, never fought and I think it is a fair bet to say he’s also never experienced a single hard sparring round.

None of that is assuring for fans of Brooks hoping he’s ready to face a much more experienced, better conditioned, less damaged opponent more than a decade his junior.

Brooks will enter the cage with far fewer years of training, infinitesimally less fight experience and likely much more physical damage than his opponent. That won’t likely add up to anything good for him.

In fact, a look at a whole other consideration paints an even more grim picture for him. Brooks’ lack of experience and shaky health aside, savvy and honest eyes only need to look at a few moments of movement from someone to have an idea of what they can offer.

To that end, everything we’ve seen from Brooks in the training room shows that he lacks the basic coordination and fluidity, both on his feet and on the ground, to give him a chance against a high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner and experienced MMA fighter like Gall. Brooks’ rigidity and halting movements suggest someone who is likely still a couple years away from the type of real sparring that he’d need to prepare for an MMA fight.

There are plenty of people in the world who an unprepared and unskilled person like Brooks could have fairly taken on for a circus-tent type UFC fight. Mickey Gall isn’t one of them.

UFC matchmaking has a long history of being the gold-standard in MMA, barring a few, mostly recent, exceptions. I have it on good authority that much of the normal process and personnel usually used to make UFC matches was not used to book Brooks’ fight with Gall.

With some folks removing themselves from the strange situation, UFC president Dana White was, I’m told, left to make the match himself. He chose a young prospect from his reality show, and now Phil Brooks is being led into the arena to face a lion, unprepared and likely overconfident.

Phil Brooks is going by his rasslin’ name, CM Punk, in his UFC debut, which is telling. Sure, it is smart marketing, but it also blurs the line between fiction and reality in a way that could be dangerous for the man.

He’s being told that he is a good match for Gall. He is being told that he’s been in over 15 fights, to prepare for it.

He’s being told he has heart, despite never really being tested by another man in a fight. He’s being told he has sacrificed so much.

There’s a word in the pro-wrestling business for someone who emotionally buys into a piece of fiction – a mark. Fights should be entered into soberly and well-prepared, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Phil Brooks is the biggest mark of all in this situation.

A lot of effort has been made to write a compelling narrative around, and for, CM Punk. On Saturday, all the CM Punk storytelling in the world won’t be able to help the real Phil Brooks as he gets locked in the cage and faces a man really trying desperately to maim him for the first time in his life.

Anything can happen and anyone can win in a real fight. Chances are, however, that things are about to get very ugly for Phil Brooks.