Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [17]
All of a sudden the machine started getting ready for me. I was told I was needed at WrestleMania in Toronto, and I’d be wrestling during the Fan Axxess convention. Next thing I know, Paul is pulling me aside, all excited, and says, “We’re starting on TV the day after Mania.”
I made my national TV debut in March 2002. I started by doing these run-ins, which are brief appearances on camera, where I would jump in the ring and hit people with my finishing maneuver, which they ended up calling the “F-5.” The maneuver consisted of me throwing my opponent up over my head, spinning him, then slamming him to the canvas all in one fluid motion. Everyone ate it up. WWE fans were looking for a new star, and here I was just smashing everything in my path.
After my first TV shot, everything happened so fast. It’s really all just a blur. Kind of like I’ve been F-5’d myself.
My entire time in WWE was a blur, actually, but those first few months were even blurrier. Paul became my on-air “agent,” (they didn’t want him to be an old-school “wrestling manager,” and Vince liked the idea of a heel agent because he hated dealing with Hollywood agents), and I got moved into a program pretty quick with the Hardy Boyz. I really liked working with them. They could move around, the crowds loved them, and they could sell my moves in a way that got the audience into the match and mad at me. Lita, one of the WWE “divas,” was dating Matt Hardy at the time, and she was with them on camera as well, so that gave me and Paul someone else to pick on to get even more heat. Nothing like picking on a woman to get a crowd riled up.
I want to mention something here in this book quickly, and then I want to move on from the subject:
While all this is happening, my daughter, Mya, was born. Right after my debut, and just as I started going on the road, this little baby came into my life and changed everything forever. I became a father on April 10, 2002. No matter what I do for the rest of my life, I’ll always be Mya Lynn Lesnar’s father first and foremost. I love Mya very much, and I can tell you that from the day my daughter was born, I have been a blessed man because of her.
I was picking up some really good steam on television, and I started getting booked for WWE shows all over the world right away. In the business, the more you work, and the more fans you draw, the more you make. While my paychecks were getting bigger and bigger, I was away from home more and more. That’s the trade-off, and it’s just another way the wrestling business eats you up.
Life on the road was wild. I was flying to a new city every day, and living the life of a rock star. Everywhere I went people knew me. I was having a great time, and who wouldn’t? Money. Girls. More girls. More money.
The only problem was that none of it was real. It wasn’t a life. It was killing time. I would look around the locker room before shows and think how lucky I was. I was probably the youngest guy there, and I was headed straight to the top. The other guys in that room weren’t so lucky. They were trapped in the life. They had no way out. They were drinking and popping pain pills like they were going out of style, and they were miserable because they had lost their faith along with their families—all they had was the Federation.
I didn’t want to be an old man, pulling pads over my surgically repaired, broken-down knees, struggling to pull on my elbow pads with arthritic shoulders, popping pain pills to make it through one more big-money match. So as much fun as I was having, even right off the bat I was thinking about how I was going to get out. Curt’s words were ringing in my ears: “Get in to get out.”
Once we got past the Hardys, the rocket ship was really strapped to my ass, and the fuse was lit. That’s when the whole deal went down involving the match that never happened with Stone Cold Steve Austin, one of the WWE’s biggest stars at the time. Why was he a star? “Because Stone Cold says so.” He was a big, tough, raunchy,