During pregame introductions, Hand walked over to Minnesota’s side of the mat waiting to shake Lesnar’s hand.
Lesnar emerged from behind his teammates and ran past Hand, making his way to center circle while indicating to Hand that center circle was where the two should meet. Hand went to center circle, acting like he would wish Lesnar good luck there and shake his hand.
But Hand fooled all, running to center circle and right past Lesnar. The Gophers heavyweight simply waved good-bye.
Hand was as good as his word, putting Lesnar on his back early with a whip-over for four points and then holding on for a 5–3 win. Minnesota, up on the Hawkeyes going into Lesnar’s bout, never recovered, losing the Big 10 title. Lesnar took the defeat in stride — he was focused on the Big 10 and NCAA tournaments coming up in the next month. “Better to lose now,” he said, “than then.”
Prophetic words indeed; Lesnar beat Hand 2–1 to take his second straight Big 10 Championship and then outlasted him in overtime to win the NCAA Championship 3–2. Lesnar became Minnesota’s first heavyweight wrestling champion since Verne Gagne back in 1949.
“That night I felt like a weight was lifted off of me,” Lesnar remembered. “Waking up the next day though, I felt empty. I had been wrestling for so long, I didn’t know what to do next.”
What was next was obvious to most watching closely. Lesnar would do what it appeared he was born to do — entertain as a professional wrestler. The Olympics were a possibility. The National Football League was also a challenge that would linger in his mind for years, and Minnesota football coach Glen Mason made him an offer to play for the Gophers the next year.
But buoyed by the success of Angle in the WWE ring, there was never a better time to be a big, muscular, charismatic amateur wrestler: Lesnar would command quite a price from the WWE. They were definitely interested and not alone. Offers also poured in from New Japan Pro-Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling. Everyone wanted the next Angle — and with his sheer size, Lesnar had the chance to be an even bigger star in the image-obsessed wrestling business.
Said former WWE Vice President of Talent Relations Jim Ross, “I recruited him out of Minnesota for WWE when I was executive vice president of the company, in charge of talent. He wrestled for J Robinson, and J was roommates with Jerry Brisco, one of the guys I worked with . . . Jerry was a great recruiter and really helped us a lot. I think we met Brock as a junior at Minnesota. And how could you not be attracted by the look of this guy? . . . We saw Brock, and we saw a guy that was an amazing athlete with a phenomenal look. He was a natural 285-pound guy with freakish quickness, agility, and balance. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t interested in pursuing wrestling internationally when he finished college. I didn’t have any conversations with him regarding MMA, because he wanted to make some money right away. Of all the guys that I signed, and I signed some intriguing guys like Steve Austin, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and others, he made it to the seven figure level faster than anyone we’d ever signed. I don’t think there’s been anyone in the history of the business who made that much money, and as quickly, as Brock Lesnar did.”
“When I got out of college, after I won my NCAA title, I didn’t have a lot of options. There aren’t a lot of options for an amateur wrestler. You can go to the Olympics or you can become a coach,” Lesnar said. “The bottom line was Vince [McMahon] had $250,000 waiting for me and a contract on the table, and I was 21 years old and didn’t have a pot to piss in. Come on. You make the decision.”
In August 2000, Lesnar joined the WWF’s Ohio Valley Wrestling developmental program in Louisville, Kentucky. In a warehouse across the Ohio River in Indiana, Lesnar learned the basics of the wrestling business from Jim Cornette and former wrestler “Dangerous” Danny Davis.
“We used to call him Block Lesnar here in OVW for block-head,” Cornette said. “Not in front of him now, behind his back everybody did. . . . I always thought that Brock was holding back in developmental; I didn’t think he gave his best effort even though he was getting paid 250 grand a year to train. I didn’t think Brock had a lot of personality — I was wrong about that. I was right in the context of pro wrestling but I was wrong [saying] he didn’t have personality. I always thought Brock Lesnar had a number of character flaws, one of which being you know he’s the big farm boy, right? The big, meat-headed farm boy.”
He may not have impressed with his brains, but Lesnar was a quick study in the ring, teaming with his predecessor at Minnesota, Shelton Benjamin. Benjamin was a two-time All-American and continued on with the program after he graduated as an assistant, spending plenty of time on the mat with Lesnar. Possessed with natural athleticism and rare physical presence, the two both seemed like future stars.
In March 2002, Lesnar made his television debut on Raw. Accompanied by manager Paul Heyman, who dubbed Lesnar “The Next Big Thing,” Brock was an immediate hit. WWE officials had been worried about a lack of personality, “no sizzle,” as Jim Ross put it to the Minnesota Star Tribune, to go along with his steak. It was a concern they had expressed about Angle as well. Both men, it seemed, were better when the bright lights were shining than they were on the practice stage.
Lesnar skyrocketed to success faster than anyone in WWE history. Borrowing a page from WCW’s playbook, Lesnar received a push similar to that of wrestling’s previous breakout star Bill Goldberg. Demolishing everything in sight, Lesnar became a star by winning, winning, and then winning some more. Just six months into his professional career, Brock beat the company’s brightest star the Rock at SummerSlam 2002 for the WWE heavyweight title, at 25 becoming the promotion’s youngest-ever world champion. As Dave Meltzer wrote in the Wrestling Observer, it was an attempt to make a new star for the first time in years: “The idea was that to get Lesnar over as a fresh money draw, the guy he needed to beat was the Rock, and that Rock would do it the right way. The fact that he was untarnished, in that fans never saw him lose . . . for all the talk of winning and losing not meaning anything, was part of the reason this worked. And they went full steam ahead in that direction, with the great finishing touches being the training videos for both that aired on many different shows. Rock, to his credit, put Lesnar over in the middle with the F-5, and whatever Lesnar’s career does from here can’t be blamed on the Rock not giving him the proper sendoff.”
The big push continued with a huge win over the Undertaker in a Hell in a Cell match, a rare honor and a clear sign that the company was behind him 100 percent. He lost his title to the Big Show at Survivor Series that year, his first televised pinfall loss since starting with the WWE that spring. Heyman turned on him and suddenly the odds were stacked against him — an attempt to turn Lesnar babyface. The WWE liked long-term champions to be good guys — after all, the good guys sold the merchandise and this was a multi-pronged business. There was, it was thought, money in Brock Lesnar.
Clash of the Titans
Behind the scenes, Lesnar struggled with the road schedule and the industry’s cutthroat politics. Competing now for wrestling’s top spot, he was an amateur in a professional game for high stakes. His traveling partner was Kurt Angle, and the two went back and forth, two alpha males sparring verbally and physically about who was best. Eventually it came down to testing each other on the mat.
“Brock and I mixed it up — we used to train and wrestle and spar,” Angle said. “I used to win a lot because I was a much better wrestler than him. We’d go at it and I’d beat him. A lot of people made a big deal out of it but this was not MMA, it was Olympic-style wrestling.”
“I was in there with him when he was jacked up at 315. He said I was too small and every week I would get on him,” Angle told radio shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. “Finally, him and Big Show were in the ring wrestling. He was throwing Big Show around pretty good. I was like, ‘Wow. Big Show’s 520 pounds and Brock is throwing him. This kid’s strong.’ I told Big Show, ‘Get out.’ I walked in behind
him and tapped on Brock’s shoulder. He turned around and gave me a look like ‘Oh no.’ We went at it and I took him down eight or nine times. It was a humbling experience for Brock. There were so many people there watching.”
The two eventually made their feud public in front of a paying audience and television cameras. It was the first matchup of NCAA champions in decades, and the two had amazing chemistry both in and out of the ring. Both natural heels, Lesnar started their program as the babyface, with Angle cutting promos trashing local sports heroes and plotting and scheming with dastardly manager Paul Heyman and Team Angle, his own stable of heels. It had the look of a classic feud, but just as things got heated up for their first singles bout headlining WrestleMania XIX, Angle could no longer keep a secret that had been tormenting him for some time — his neck was in constant agony.
Lesnar blames himself. “When me and Kurt Angle got in the squared circle, there were a lot of real things going on. We pushed each other to the limit. That’s one of those guys I felt he and I could go out and not only tear the house down but execute things that looked real. And they were very real. Some nights they were very real. One night, Kurt had neck problems going way back, but I threw him into the turnbuckle and hit him very hard. I believe his refracture in the wrestling business came from me. I broke his neck that night. I wasn’t the first to break his neck, but it was hard. Me and Kurt went at it. He hit me hard and I hit him back harder.”
Most in the industry thought the WrestleMania main event would be off. Angle was clearly in no shape to wrestle and was risking serious and permanent injury by even considering it. It was expected he would drop the title in a quick television match and have immediate surgery. Instead, he decided to do what he always does — give it his all. Angle had been planning on doing what a star of his caliber rarely did in the cutthroat wrestling culture of the early 2000s — he was going to make a star of Brock Lesnar if it killed him. Unfortunately, in this case, that was more than just a turn of phrase. Angle was intent on putting on a great show, regardless of the consequences. Of course, he didn’t make that decision in a vacuum. Vince McMahon helped him find his path.
“The worst thing I ever experienced in the WWE was at WrestleMania XIX when Kurt Angle faced Brock Lesnar in the main event,” former WWE writer Dominick Pagliaro recalled. “Angle was suffering from really severe neck and spinal cord problems — he needed surgery immediately. His doctor told him that if he wrestled that match against Lesnar, he probably wouldn’t be able to stand up and walk out of the ring; he’d be paralyzed. So Kurt goes to McMahon and tells him this, and I watch Vince. Vince just looks at him and is like, ‘Yes, you could not wrestle the match, or you could wrestle the match,’ in this way that was very Vince, very subtly letting him know that, even knowing he might be paralyzed, he expected him to wrestle that match.”
Before the match, the normally fearless Angle was petrified. His daughter had been born shortly before WrestleMania and the consequences of his actions were suddenly seeming pretty important. He might have been willing to cripple himself for his art, but was he willing to risk being able to play with his kid when he got older?
“The first and only thing I was thinking about was ‘God, I hope I make it through this.’ At this point I only had 20 percent strength in my left arm,” Angle told Off the Record’s Michael Landsberg in 2004. “My arm could have fell off because I had no strength in it. And the thing I was most nervous about was Brock Lesnar. Here’s this guy, he’s a rookie who doesn’t know how to let up in the ring. This is his first WrestleMania. So he’s nervous as hell. I have a 300-pound man who can bench 700 pounds getting ready to face me at WrestleMania, his first, and he doesn’t really know how to work yet. He’s basically a loose cannon and I have the injuries to my neck. Man, that is not a good mixture.”
The match was a classic, of course. When firing on all cylinders, Angle was as good as anyone. Even with his physical shortcomings, he was able to perform at a level few would ever reach. Fans and media critics, who knew of Angle’s real life injuries, watched with a sense of foreboding and doom hanging over the match. Angle, despite his physical state, refused to adjust his style in the ring. In the Observer, Dave Meltzer was aghast: “Even in his condition, except for the fact that he had a concerned look on his face, he didn’t shy away from any moves. He took bumps on his neck, and a hard clothesline. There’s a line between guts and bad judgement and most of your top wrestlers at times cross it, but he was all the way into another state.”
The two were on their way to an amazing bout when Lesnar decided he wanted the match to be a thing of legend, not just another main event. For the finish, he decided to climb to the top rope and do a reverse somersault off it, a move called the shooting star press.
This was a pretty difficult bit of acrobatics. Much smaller men had tried and failed time and time again. WWE star Chris Jericho had broken his arm in an attempt and Billy Kidman, who specialized in using the move, was hurting himself or opponents on what seemed like a nearly constant basis. Lesnar had used the move during his training days in Ohio Valley but hadn’t debuted it in the WWE yet. It would have been the perfect end to a great match — the culmination of what Pro Wrestling Torch columnist Bruce Mitchell called “one of the great wrestling events of the modern era.” Instead, Lesnar slipped and landed right on his head.
“When he landed on his head, I didn’t even think he was going to be able to finish the match,” Angle said. “I figured, ‘Oh man, I’m going to have to hold my title another month and put off my surgery.’ The good thing is, thank God, he was able to come out of it and able to hit his finish. I thought it helped the match that he didn’t hit it. The fact that he landed on his head — a lot of people remember that.”
A glassy-eyed Lesnar was able to get to his feet and pick Angle up for his F-5 finisher. He had suffered a major concussion. Backstage, it looked like a war zone.
“I watched Kurt after that match, and he was laid out on the floor spasming out of control and foaming at the mouth and just in unimaginable pain and fear for his life,” Pagliaro remembers. “They had to call in the medics — you can watch and you’ll see that Kurt was never the same.”
After the match, Angle shocked onlookers again, choosing not to use famed surgeon Lloyd Youngblood who had done wonders with WWE stars like Steve Austin and Chris Benoit, instead going with the experimental treatment offered by Dr. Hae-Dong Jho. Jho’s treatment intrigued Angle because it would put him out of action for just six weeks instead of a calendar year. Long term, the decision would have major repercussions, but in the short term it was a huge success. By June, Angle was back in the ring and he and Lesnar picked up right where they left off.
Their feud reached an apex with a 60-minute iron man match on live television that September. It was the first televised match of its kind in the United States since Curt Hennig and Nick Bockwinkel had wrestled 60 minutes on ESPN in 1986 for the AWA. The two would wrestle a full hour — whoever had the most pinfalls or submissions at the end of the time limit would be declared the winner. Angle and Lesnar were so good a pairing that they necessitated a culture shift in the promotion. A year earlier, no one would have considered a 60-minute match on television. Wrestling matches were seen almost as filler between interviews and skits. Angle and Lesnar helped change all that.
The match itself was a cathartic experience. Angle lost his older sister to a heart attack the day before the bout. Lesnar sprained his knee the day prior to that in a tune-up match, an injury initially feared to be an MCL tear, but continued wrestling despite the pain. Lesnar won the WWE title, outlasting Angle 5–4 while refusing to tap to a last-second heel hook that would have evened the score. The match was met with rave reviews in the wrestling press, with Pro Wrestling Torch editor Wade Keller giving it a coveted five star rating:
It was a risky decision by WWE and a gutsy challenge to undertake by Angle and Lesnar. It was a show of faith in Brock and Angl
e as athletes and perhaps just as much an experiment to see how such a match would hold up in the ratings.
Plus, Angle shouldn’t have even been wrestling today considering he was reluctantly resigning himself to forced retirement just before WrestleMania this year due to his bad neck. Brock Lesnar is so early in his pro career, he really has no business being this good, this fast, even with a phenomenal performer such as Angle (perhaps the best all-around and most consistent worker of the last ten years) in the ring as his opponent.
Soon after, however, the decision to go with the less invasive neck surgery came back to haunt him. He needed corrective surgery and then suffered issues with a blood clot. As Angle struggled with his health, Lesnar faced his own battles with the wrestling industry. The travel schedule was wearing him down. He bought a private plane to ease some of the strain, angering his WWE colleagues who thought he was getting a little big for his britches, but the schedule was still grueling. Pro Wrestling Torch’s Jason Powell wrote that problems in his personal life were making a bad situation worse: “Lesnar started voicing his frustration with the hectic WWE travel schedule. It’s no coincidence that he encountered problems with his romantic life around this same time. The pressure of juggling his long-time girlfriend (who is the mother of his child) and his on-the-road girlfriend Rena Mero started catching up with him. The word from Lesnar’s Minnesota pals is that his long-time girlfriend, for whatever reason, decided to move a few hours away from Lesnar’s home with the couple’s daughter.”
Suddenly, Lesnar’s travel schedule became even more hectic. In addition to making his WWE commitments Saturday through Tuesday each week, friends say Lesnar also spent countless hours making the long road trip from the Twin Cities to pick up his daughter. A typical Wednesday “off day” for Lesnar involved flying home from wherever the SmackDown tapings were held the night before, driving a couple hours to pick up his daughter, and then making the return trip home with her. Lesnar usually repeated his road trek at some point before he headed back to work on Saturday morning.
Shooters Page 36