Death Clutch

by Brock Lesnar

  I think everyone should have a right to privacy. Certainly, my family has a right to be left alone. My wife was on TV for a while, so she can expect some of the attention, I get that. But my children aren’t performers. What makes them fair game? What gives anyone else the right to take pictures of my children? Why does anyone think it’s okay to just walk up to me and act as if I owe them an answer to personal questions? Is it because they bought a ticket or purchased a pay-per-view? I’ve never been able to grasp that. Why can’t I just do my job? If I’m at an event, or out promoting something, that’s one thing. I expect to take pictures and sign autographs. That’s why I’m there. But I deserve a private life, too, and so does my family.

  Over the years, I’m sure that being as private as I am has cost me a lot of money. I could be like one of those media whores that shows up anywhere there might be a camera just to keep my name out there, and to keep my face on the TV and in the papers so the endorsements will keep coming in. But that’s not me, and I can live with that.

  I like to stay home, spend time with my family, and be left alone. My life is my life. It’s nobody’s business what goes on in my house, or with my wife or my children. I won’t intrude on your private life. Don’t intrude on mine.

  That’s why, in some ways, the WWE character I envied the most was Kane. He had the greatest gig ever, because he was a big star who wore a mask on TV. When he went home, he’d get to take off the mask and live a normal life. Nobody knew what he looked like, and no one ever bothered him when he went about his personal life. He must have had about as normal a life as you can have in professional wrestling. That’s probably why Glenn Jacobs (Kane) survived for so long in WWE. Maybe I should have worn a mask. I might have lasted just a little longer . . . or not.

  THE GRIND

  When people talk to me about 2003, they talk about my match with Kurt at WrestleMania; my matches with John Cena and Big Show; the Iron Man Match (most falls in sixty minutes) I had with Kurt on SmackDown!; or me beating Kurt for the title and turning heel again.

  Financially, that was also my best year in WWE. I was made champion so fast, Vince never even got around to giving me a new contract. I was on the road so much, we never had the time to discuss a new deal. Even by the time I was already a two-time champion, I was still working under the “developmental contract” I signed when I was recruited to train in OVW. Finally, we got around to discussing a new contract, and I signed a major deal with WWE on July 1, 2003.

  Jim Ross kept telling me I had joined the millionaire’s club faster than anyone else in the history of the business. That may be true, but I’ll have to take his word for it because I didn’t pay much attention to what the other guys were making. They all lied anyway, so who really knew?

  I was making a shitload of money, but I just couldn’t imagine being on the road for another fifteen years or so. I really liked the boys, but I didn’t want to be like them. It didn’t take me long to figure that out.

  It’s so hard to even imagine being thirty-five to forty years old, working matches four nights a week in four different cities. When those wrestlers get home for a day or two, they are too tired and banged up to do anything. The few who still have families try to give their loved ones a little quality time, but when they arrive at home tired, hurt, and probably hungover, they end up spending the first day just decompressing. Then they use the next day to catch up on the mail, the bills, and chores around the house. Once they’ve had a night or two in their own beds, they are packed and off to the airport piss-early the next morning. Their wives and kids get to see them on TV. So what? That’s no substitute for being there.

  It makes no difference where the plane lands, because all the cities look the same. It bears repeating. All the hotel rooms look the same. All the locker rooms, rental car return lots, shuttle buses, they all look the same. You’re on autopilot all the time. Then you go home, but before you know it, you’re back in the grind, shaking everyone’s hands, being careful not to piss anyone off.

  Vince drills into the guys the notion that they have to believe in their characters if they want the fans to believe in them, too. What happens over the years is that some of the guys get so into their characters, they don’t know when—or how—to turn it off. They become their own number one fans. That’s how Vince gets so many guys by the balls after a while. The guys will do anything to get their characters over, and if they’re lucky enough to get into a good position, they will do anything to keep their characters in the spotlight. It becomes all about Vince. Vince pulls and controls all of the strings.

  Vince can suggest anything he wants, and as long as he says, “It will be great for your character,” there’s a bunch of guys ready and willing to do whatever he says. They are brainwashed, and they don’t even know it.

  Take a shot to the head with a metal folding chair? Great idea. Do a body slam from the top rope onto the concrete outside the ring? Awesome finish. Fall from the top of a twelve-foot ladder? That’ll get a big pop. Finish the match with a Shooting Star Press? Yeah, I know.

  Even though I was there only a relatively short time, I wasn’t immune to the sell. I was slowly getting sucked in. WWE superstar Brock Lesnar agreed to do the Shooting Star Press finish, not Brock Lesnar, farmer and father.

  The problem is that when you are in WWE’s universe, it becomes very difficult to step out. You can’t see in from the outside. You can’t take an honest look at yourself and say, “What the hell am I doing?” There is no such thing as “normal.”

  In an attempt to keep my sanity, and avoid becoming like all the others, I kept telling J.R., Laurinaitis, Brisco (and anyone else who would listen) that I needed some time off. That didn’t work, so I finally cornered Vince and told him the same thing.

  You should have seen the look on his face. You would have thought that I stuck a knife in his stomach and twisted it. He acted as if I had committed the ultimate act of betrayal. “I have all of this TV time invested in you” . . . “The COMPANY is counting on you” . . . “I told everyone I could rely on you. You can’t let me down.”

  Eventually, I persuaded Vince to give me a weekend off here and there, but he was never going to let me come off the road for a couple of months. It didn’t matter to him if I dropped the title or not, there was just no way he was going to give me that kind of time off.

  Vince did, of course, have a lot riding on me. I was the youngest champion ever, and was built up to be the Next Big Thing. But a lot of it was also Vince making sure I didn’t step outside of the WWE universe long enough to be able to look back in. If I did, I might see things as they are, and not as he wanted me to see them.

  It’s all about control, and Vince wasn’t going to let me have any. The more I work, the more money I generate for Vince through ticket sales, merchandise, DVDs, pay-per-views, and advertising revenue. If it ruins my life, and I end up a zombie like the others, so what.

  On one of the rare weekends that I did manage to get off, I was sitting at home, and I was trying to figure out why I was so worn down. I felt like an old man even though I was only twenty-five. The obvious suspects were the injuries that had never had time to heal properly; a lot of empty vodka bottles; the hundreds of pain pills I was swallowing just to get through the tour; and the fact that I was never home and was losing my family connections because of it. I was a professional wrestler all right.

  But still I thought maybe if I didn’t have to deal with some of the travel hassles it might be different. Lines at airport security were getting worse and worse after 9/11, and for a lot of flights you had to arrive two hours early. When you fly every day, and you are always tired and beat-up, the constant lines and waiting around just wears on you. And it is even worse when you can’t walk through an airport without being recognized by hundreds or thousands of people who want pictures and autographs. So I ran the numbers, and I found out it was costing Vince about $175,000 a year to fly me
all over the country. The international tours were a different story, but just the domestic travel was somewhere between $150,000 and $175,000.

  Then it hit me. What if I bought my own plane, and avoided all the lines, check-ins, time spent waiting to board, walking through the airport, getting my bags? What if I could just hop on my own plane, go to work, do my job, and get back on my plane and come home? It would be just like driving to work for most people. Yeah, I could do that!

  So I added up some more numbers, and I figured it out so that I could buy my own plane, have one of my oldest friends, Justin, fly it for me, and actually save Vince money at the same time. Vince would only need to pay for maintenance and fuel, and he would come out ahead. One day during a SmackDown! taping, I went into Vince’s office with my spreadsheets and told him my plan. I showed Vince how he’d actually save money making this deal with me, and maybe I wouldn’t need as much time off as I was looking for. Wouldn’t you know it, the very next day the son of a bitch got back to me and said, “Let’s do it!”

  By September 2003, I had dropped the title back to Kurt Angle, only to “turn heel” in order to “beat” him for the title again. I wasn’t even a full year and a half into my run, and I was WWE Champion for the third time. I wasn’t a mark for the title, but I was very happy to grab the championship so I could be in more main events. I was already making millions. I had my own plane. The company was counting on me, and I was being reminded of that every day.

  Then came Miami . . .

  BROCK VS. ROCK IN MIAMI

  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.”