Authors: Brock Lesnar
I
was so excited the day I heard that I had been booked against Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Miami for our second one-on-one match (and if we're including the Triple Threat Match with HHH in Australia, our third match overall). It ended up being one of the most important days in my pro wrestling career, because that match in Miami was a pivotal point in my decision to quit WWE.
Before that first
SummerSlam
, the company flew me down to Miami so Dwayne and I could work out the high points and the finish of our upcoming match. It was Dwayne's daughter's first birthday, and he invited me to stay in his home, with him and his family.
Dwayne's dad was a journeyman wrestler named Rocky Johnson, so he knew how to play the pro wrestling game as good as anyone. Just like Curt Hennig, Dwayne was born into the business. These second-generation wrestlers, and even third-generation wrestlers like Randy Orton understand the business a lot better than guys who break in from other walks of life, because they grew up around it. Dwayne, Curt, and Randy all saw what the business was about, and the sacrifices a family has to make. They also learned the psychology behind the scenes because they were exposed to it from day one. That's a tremendous advantage for them, because it might as well be in their blood.
I wasn't born into the business, so unlike Dwayne and the others, I had to learn the hard way about a lot of things.
If someone from the company would have called me and said, “Hey Brock, would you mind doing a job for the Rock this weekend in Miami?” it wouldn't have been a big deal to me. I owed him that much. I liked Dwayne, and I learned a lot from him that week before he put me over for the championship. But the way everything was handled in Miami really opened my eyes to the wrestling business, and the night of my big match with Dwayne is one that I will never forget.
I showed up at the arena and was met by Jack Lanza, the road agent in charge of the show. Jack was a Minnesota boy and took me under his wing when I moved up to the WWE main roster. As the road agent, Jack would get the finishes on the phone or via e-mail from Vince, or J.R., or Laurinaitis. He would then produce the live event, and report back to the bosses on how the show went, who performed well, and who didn't.
I had been up and down the road with Jack a few times, so this day shouldn't have been any different from any other. I figured when the time was right, we would all sit down, and Jack would tell us how Vince wanted the match to end. No reason to believe this show was any different from all the others, except I was working with Dwayne, and that was pretty special for the both of us.
Then I realized: “Something ain't right here.”
The show had already started, and Jack hadn't given us a finish yet. Dwayne and I started talking about our match, and I kept thinking “Okay, but what's the finish here?”
It was about an hour and a half before we were supposed to step into the ring for the main event of the evening, and Dwayne says to me, “. . . and that's when I'll hit you with the Rock Bottom, one . . . two . . . three!”
I actually laughed, because I thought Dwayne was ribbing me. I was the WWE Champion. The Golden Boy. It was my time to be on top. I was supposed to win. And here's the Rock, who should know better, saying he's going to pin the WWE Champion with the Rock Bottom. That was funny.
Dwayne had this nervous look on his face, and he wasn't laughing with me. He just put all the heat on Vince right away, and said, “I can't believe Vince didn't tell you . . . didn't he call you about this?” Dwayne made it seem like he thought I knew he was supposed to beat me, and that he was shocked I didn't.
“I told you about things like this,” Dwayne said. “A lot of shit falls through the cracks, you gotta stay on top of Vince about everything.”
I remember the week I stayed with Dwayne, he was on the phone with Vince constantly. It was the right way to handle his business. Dwayne had a hand in everything they did with his character. He was a big enough star that he had some say in how his character was used, and how Vince would market and promote him. Even back then, Dwayne would tell me, “Now that you're going to be on top, you need to stay on top of everything, all the time.”
So I went to Lanza and said, “Jack, tell me what the hell is going on here . . . I'm the WWE Champion, and I'm losing tonight? Why didn't anyone tell me?” Jack's only reply was, “Well, it's a non-title match!”
What the hell did that mean? I never knew that my title wasn't on the line that night. I never knew that I was supposed to lose to the Rock.
“It's Miami,” Jack said. “No one will ever know!”
I can remember hearing Jack say that like it was yesterday. I wasn't upset about losing. That wasn't the point at all. What bothered me was that I was the last guy to know, when I should have been the first. No one had the guts to tell me the truth, until it was time to step into the ring. Just from the look on Dwayne's face and the tone in Jack's voice, I knew they were in on something I wasn't. It was obvious to me that Vince, Dwayne and Jack were all in cahoots, and I wasn't being smartened up to the situation until the very last minute.
That night changed my attitude toward the WWE, because it's when I started to feel Vince was a manipulating bastard, and that I was being played.
I thought it was a stupid decision to have the WWE Champion lose in a “non-title match,” but that was something I was going to have to accept. As someone who fights for real, it made no sense to me for the champion to lose ⦠and still be the champion. If someone can beat the champ, then they deserve the title. It's that simple.
Who wants to see that? People pay to see the champion because he's the champion, and his position as number one is on the line. I didn't like it. I had been pulling the company plow, been filling the arenas and selling the pay-per-views, and no one even tells me that Dwayne wants to get his loss back? No one has the balls to just say, “Brock, this is the way it is”?
Vince can't tell me the angle, the story, and why it makes sense for me to lay down for the Rock in a “non-title” match? He doesn't want my two cents' worth? I'm the damn poster boy for this company, and I'm the only one who doesn't know what's going on?
Even though I knew one day I would have to do a job for The Rock, I still kept thinking that Vince was really screwing with me, and that there was a lot more behind keeping me in the dark than just Dwayne wanting to get his loss back after a year and a half. Did I do something to piss Vince off? Did he need to show that he could keep me in my place? Something was going on.
I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a control freak. When it comes to business, I want to know what's going on, when, where, and why. This is my living. If I have to lose for the good of the company, I will, but it'll be on my terms. I thought I had a good relationship with Vince, but obviously I was wrong.
When it came to my business with the WWE, the one person I thought I could trust was Vince. When I first started we had that handshake, and I put my future in his hands. He ran the company. He controlled everything. I knew that if I couldn't count on him to tell it to me straight, I was screwed. I could play the game with everybody else on the roster and in the office, but I couldn't play games with the owner of the company. That's a fight I'm going to lose every time because HE writes the checks. HE makes all the rules.
If I'm Vince's top guy . . . the guy he's relying on . . . his go-to guy . . . his main event . . . why would he lie to me? Why would he play this kind of game with me, in Miami, for no reason? Just to mess with my head? Just to do it for the sake of doing it?
To Vince, it may have been just another day in the wrestling business, but to me it was a lot more than that. That day was the first in a chain of events that led to my departure from the WWE.
The wheels were still spinning in my head about getting screwed over in Miami, when Vince tells me he wants me to lose the WWE title to Eddie Guerrero. Of course, Vince put his own twist on it: “Goldberg's going to interfere, give the win to Eddie, and that'll set up this huge match at
WrestleMania
between the two of you. Lesnar vs. Goldberg is so big it will sell itself, you don't need the WWE title involved.”
Of course, Vince kept telling me how good it would be for my character to drop the title to Eddie, and then take on Goldberg. “You can beat Goldberg in thirty seconds. He's leaving, so I don't care. We can get Austin involved, and it's going to be the biggest match on the card.
WrestleMania 20
. Madison Square Garden. Brock Lesnar vs. Bill Goldberg, and Stone Cold Steve Austin will be out there as the special guest referee. It's big box office, it's pure money.”
I knew what this was about. Vince was selling me hard on
WrestleMania
because he wanted to get the title on Eddie Guerrero. Vince kept telling me how the Latino audience was growing, and this was the right move for business. But after what happened in Miami, our relationship had already gone south. I never believed another word that came out of Vince's mouth. I no longer had any faith whatsoever in the Federation.
But Vince isn't the only one that screwed me.
I
was getting angrier and angrier. I couldn't get any time off. My body was hurting. I was going through a lot of personal drama. I was pissed off about the way things went down in Miami, and I certainly wasn't happy about being replaced by Eddie Guerrero as WWE Champion.
I remembered how every step up the ladder was worth more money to me, and now I'm looking at going back down that ladder?
I don't talk to a lot of people from the company nowadays, and it was the same story during my time in WWE. I didn't like how untrustworthy so many of the boys were, but I thought there were a few people I could count on. Kurt Angle was supposed to be one of those people. Then something happened that caused me to wonder.
I had many conversations with Kurt, but I soon found out those conversations didn't remain strictly between us. It's unfortunate I had to learn that lesson the hard way.
I knew that at any given moment, anybody in that locker room would stab you in the back if they could get away with it. They all wanted a better place on the card. Everyone wanted to make more money, to have the best matches, get the biggest push. It's no secret in the pro wrestling business that you have to watch your back at all times. Everyone is put in the position to double-cross the other guy to get ahead. Sometimes, they want to see if you're willing to be that ruthless, because Vince likes to see his top guys fight for the number one position.
Kurt and I should have had a bond. We both rose to the top in amateur wrestling. We were both real athletes, true competitors. But at the same time, Kurt wanted my position just like everyone else in the locker room. He just wanted what I had.
Vince never looked at Kurt the way he looked at me. Kurt had that Olympic Gold Medal, but Vince and HHH didn't see an Olympic Champion. They only saw a five-foot nine-inch guy in tights. In their minds, fans pay to see the huge guys perform. Kurt could never be “bigger than life.” It didn't matter how good he was in the ring, Kurt just wasn't tall enough or big enough to be Vince McMahon's top guy for any length of time.
Believing I could trust Kurt, I told him I was thinking of getting out of the business. I didn't tell anyone else, and he said he wouldn't either. But soon after I confided in him, I became convinced that Vince knew I was planning to leave. Did Kurt stooge me out?
At the time, Kurt and I were traveling together, and I was already thinking something was up with him just from the way he was acting. Then, one day, I went out to move the rental car, and saw Kurt's cell phone on the seat next to me. I opened it up, and the last call made was to Vince McMahon. Does that prove anything? Maybe, maybe not. But from that day forward I kept my mouth shut, and didn't say anything to Kurt that I didn't want anyone else to know.
I dropped the WWE title to Eddie Guerrero at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. The whole story line was centered on Bill Goldberg getting into the ring and giving me a spear. I didn't believe Vince wanted the title on Eddie Guerrero because he thought Eddie would draw more money than I could, or that Vince had this vision in his head about me versus Goldberg at
WrestleMania
. I suspected Vince made the decision to take the title off me because Kurt had told him I was thinking about leaving.
I started to concentrate on just getting through
WrestleMania
, and getting my hands on that nice payday before getting out. You know it never works out that way, of course, because just as I was getting my head into survival mode, WWE pulled another bullshit move on me.
We were scheduled to go to South Africa, and that's just a miserable trip. It's on the other side of the world. The food sucks. It's a long trip to get there, and a long trip back. There's nothing good about it except you can make some good money when you're in the main event.
I was scheduled to wrestle in those main events against Kurt and Eddie in Triple Threat matches for all four South Africa shows, but right before we left the United States, the WWE changed the main events to just Kurt vs. Eddie. I was told the two of them needed to get their match down for
WrestleMania
, which meant I was stuck wrestling Bob Holly, who I had just beat in four minutes at
The Royal Rumble
.
I like Bob. He's a good guy and he takes his shit seriously, but I didn't want to work with him. Nothing against him, but wrestling Bob Holly wasn't worth anything to me at the time.
We did our match at
The Royal Rumble
, and that should have been the end of our story line. But now I have to travel all the way to South Africa to work with Bob Holly? Could anyone please tell me why? I knew no one would pay to see that match. Since I'm not really needed, give me some time off. I really needed the break by this time, but John Laurinaitis told me how much I'm needed on the card. AGAINST BOB HOLLY? Are you shitting me?
I knew the truth. I was just on the card, taking up space. That's not where I wanted to be. It's never where I wanted to be.
Even today, at this very moment, I'm still pissed at myself for getting on the plane to South Africa. I should have just walked. The trip sucked all around, the money wasn't worth the time and aggravation, and I drank all the way back to the United States. I spent fifty-four miserable hours on an airplane that trip.
When we landed at JFK Airport in New York, we got herded like cattle onto a bus over to LaGuardia Airport, where we were supposed to get on another plane and head to Atlanta. Once we get to Atlanta, we're supposed to take this little puddle jumper to Savannah. Once the crew would get to Savannah, it's back to the same old monotonous daily grind again. Get your bags. Grab a rental car. Find a gym. Look for something to eat. Hope for some sleep, because you have to be ready the next morning to spend your whole day taping TV.
That's when I snapped.
Nathan Jones had lost his mind a month earlier, and he was just minutes away from wrestling in his hometown in Australia. But the weird thing is that, when Nathan snapped, I kept thinking that everything he was saying made sense.
“Nothing is worth this stress” . . . “It's all games, but then they tell you how seriously they take their own business” . . . “I just don't want to be here anymore.”
So we land at JFK and get bussed over to LaGuardia, and that's when I started drinking again. I was sitting at the airport bar, and I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to get on yet another airplane and go all the way to Savannah. Why? So I could wrestle Bob Holly again? I had no idea what they had in store for me at the TV taping, and I didn't care. I had enough. This was it. The end of the line. I was going home.
I got up from the bar, walked through the airport to the ticket desk, and bought my own plane ticket to Minneapolis. When I got on the plane headed home, I ordered another drink to celebrate, but they cut me off. I wasn't happy about being refused alcohol, and I almost caused a major scene that could have turned out really ugly. Not a smart move on my part, but when your head is all full with this other nonsense . . .
Lucky for me I wasn't kicked off the plane and I made it home. Those poor flight attendants. They could have blown the whistle on me, but they didn't. I guess this is my chance to say “I'm sorry” in a pretty public way to them, and thanks for not making a bad day a whole lot worse.
I had it in my head that I wasn't going to do the TV taping in Savannah. In fact, I was going to pull a Steve Austin. I was home, and I wasn't leaving again. Not to go back on the road. No way that was going to happen! This is where I can say I really understood what Austin was thinking that day he walked out, and why I never took it personally. When Steve walked out, it wasn't about working with me. It was about everything
but
me.
I didn't want to leave because of Eddie Guerrero, or Bob Holly, or anyone else. I just had to get out. I had lost my faith, which happened because I had no family after being on the road three hundred days a year, and all I had was the Federation. How could I provide a nice life for my daughter if she never got a chance to see me? And what kind of financial rewards could I earn if I am slowly being worked back down the ladder? I was finally thinking clearly, or so I thought.
I don't know why I got on my plane the next morning and flew to Savannah, but I did. I think Rena talked me into it. “Go to Savannah, settle up face-to-face with Vince, handle your business the right way.”
I love that woman.
When I showed up at the building in Savannah, the producer told me I was supposed to go nine minutes on TV with Bob Holly. I blew a gasket. I went straight to Gerry Brisco, and told him, “You recruited me, so I want you to know I'm leaving. I'm outta here.”
I wanted to tell Vince to his face, too. I had dropped the title to Eddie Guerrero so WWE could draw with the Latino market, and my match with Goldberg at
WrestleMania
is supposed to be so big the title isn't needed to sell it? I'm supposed to crush Bill Goldberg at
Mania
in thirty seconds, but I can't get through Bob Holly in nine minutes?
I remember watching Brisco look for Vince, and I was just boiling. Vince was in the ring with HHH, so I just walked up to him and said, “We need to chat.” Not understanding how serious I was, Vince made me wait a few minutes. I was only getting hotter and hotter, so I interrupted his conversation and told him we needed to sit down and talk immediately.
We went into his office, and I told Vince I was done, “going home.” I had no desire to wrestle Bob Holly on TV, didn't want to wrestle that night period, and just wanted to leave. Vince said, “Well, Brock, what about
WrestleMania
? You can't leave on bad terms that way!”
I'll never forget his next line. “You can't do this to me.”
All I could think of was, “DO THIS TO YOU?” I didn't know what Vince thought I was doing to him, but whatever was going on was something I no longer wanted any part of!
I agreed to stay on through
WrestleMania
, but only because I wanted that payday from my match with Goldberg. I trimmed down my match on TV with Bob Holly to a few minutes, wrestled that night, got showered and dressed, and jumped back on my plane.
Rena rode home on my plane with me, and I felt relieved. I was going to leave the company. Stupid me, I let Vince talk me into dragging it out all the way to
WrestleMania
, but if I didn't agree to that, they probably wouldn't have paid me a lot of the money they owed me already. So financially, it was smart to agree to stay through
Mania
.
I know Vince was pissed off. In his universe, I was ungrateful. I had turned around and spit in his face. But it's not like he shouldn't have seen it coming. How many times did I tell him I needed time off? How many times did I tell him I wasn't happy with the life, or what it was doing to me? Vince always had his stock reply: “Brock, you're so much tougher than that.”
But it wasn't about being tough. It was about having a life. A year or two bouncing around town to town, bar to bar, girl to girl, Vicodin to Vicodin, vodka bottle to vodka bottle, is not a life.
I loved being in the ring and performing. Bringing people to their feet. Getting people to hate my character. Entertaining the fans. I had a great time doing all of that, especially when I got to work with people I liked. But I wanted to have a family, too, and I knew there was no way to do that with the schedule I worked. I don't hate professional wrestling, and I certainly don't hate the people in it. Life on the road is just not for me. It's not the life I choose to live.
When the time came, I made my announcement and told everyone I was leaving the WWE. From that day forward I became the outcast. None of the guys wanted to be seen with me, because I was the bad apple. I was turning my back on the wrestling businessâtheir business, their life. I was leaving. I was jumping off the train. They couldn't understand it, because that train was the only ride most of these guys would ever know.
I didn't care, because I had made my choice. I still walked around like I owned the place, because there wasn't one guy in that company who could even hold my jockstrap. If I wanted to shoot on anyone in that locker room at any time, there wasn't a thing anyone could have done about it. I could have stretched every single one of them out. But that's not what the business is about, so I tried to be good about it. Be a professional. Do my job. Earn my check. Be a provider for my family.
My daughter, Mya, changed my life. I wanted to be there for her, wanted to watch her grow up. So many of these guys, with their multiple ex-wives, and broken-up families in different states, missed everything that's really important in life. I didn't want that, and I didn't want that for my daughter either. She deserves a real father.
Don't get me wrong. There were a lot of good things about working for WWE. I made a lot of money, even though I spent quite a bit of it trying to get out of my contract. I became famous, which did help me when I wanted a chance in the UFC. I learned about promotion and marketing. But the best thing was meeting my wife. If I hadn't been in WWE, I wouldn't have met Rena. She's given me two healthy sons, and she's been wonderful with Mya. When I say I'm a man who has been blessed by God, I mean it.
Rena stood by my decision to leave WWE, which wasn't easy for her because she was still with the company at the time. But she could tell there was no way I was going to stay any longer. Besides the lifestyle and all the bullshit, I wanted to compete and get back into athletics again. I thought maybe I would give pro football a try.
But, in my desperation to get out of WWE, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I signed a release that included a noncompete clause.
Vince was pissed at me because we had just done the new deal in July 2003, and he claimed it was the best deal he ever gave any wrestler. But by then I didn't care about the money or the contract. I had money, and I just wanted to be done with Vince.