Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [11]
This is my book, and I’m calling them the WWE. If you don’t like it, skip to the UFC chapters.
As my college days were winding down I really had to think about what I wanted to do with my life. A lot of people ask me why I didn’t go for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The answer to that one is easy. I was sick and tired of being broke.
I knew guys who were chasing the Olympic dream. They were driving up to the gym in their broken-down cars, working nine-to-five jobs to support their training. I had already been doing that my whole life. After everything I put myself through to win the NCAA title, I was done paying dues. It was time to cash in. My dream was never the Olympics. It was to win the NCAA Heavyweight Championship. I achieved my goal, and I knew in my heart it was time to move on.
The university was helping me in my transition from student athlete to professional. At the time, I was thinking about trying either professional football or professional wrestling. The school had a legal department, and they set up interviews for me with different attorneys and agents. I picked a Minneapolis lawyer named David Bradley Olsen, because he had the most experience. He had represented professional wrestlers, including Jesse “The Body” Ventura, and he had sued the WWE a couple of times.
I had also met NFL head coach Tony Dungy a few times because he played football for the University of Minnesota back in the day. He wanted me to try out for the NFL in Tampa Bay, where he was calling the shots. Tony had a lot of faith in my ability to make the team, but I made a big decision the night before I was going to get on the plane for Florida. The NFL was going to have to wait. I was being offered a sure thing, and was going to become a professional wrestler.
Again, it was really simple. WWE offered me guaranteed money, including a big signing bonus with no strings attached. I would even get paid a huge salary for the time I was training to be a pro wrestler.
My lawyers have told me I can’t print how much I signed for, because of a confidentiality clause. Here’s what I can say: I signed the biggest development deal in WWE history. I can also tell you that I had absolutely no idea how lucrative my contract was, because I didn’t know anyone in the wrestling business. I hadn’t even watched five minutes of pro wrestling in my life. All I knew was that I was a poor kid with student loans, and I was being offered more money than I’d ever seen in my entire life. Brock Lesnar was off to join the circus!
PART II
THE NEXT BIG THING
FAITH, FAMILY, FEDERATION
I remember my first meeting with WWE. I was twenty-two years old, and Vince McMahon flew me and my lawyer out to Connecticut. As soon as we landed, there was a limousine waiting to take us to the WWE world headquarters in Stamford. The place was a little different from the gymnasiums I was used to, and looked like a rock concert that had collided with a wrestling museum. There were televisions everywhere showing WWE highlights. Heavy metal was playing over the sound system. Posters of “WWE Superstars” lined the walls. There was a state-of-the-art gym and weight room, a full-service cafeteria, and a television production studio. For a farm boy from South Dakota, it was all pretty impressive.
For those of you who don’t know, Vince McMahon is world famous, and he is rich. Very rich. Since the 1980s, he has appeared on national television every week in his own programs, and he is the face of the WWE. But in addition to the “role” of WWE chairman he plays on TV, he is also the owner and creative mind behind the entire company. Vince is the absolute boss. Nothing happens in that company without his say-so. He is a big, bodybuilder type, with slick dark hair and a booming voice. He is larger than life, and can sell snow cones to Eskimos. But I wasn’t a pro wrestling fan at the time, so when I walked in, all I saw was the guy who could sign my paycheck.