Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [18]
Paul knows the story better than I do, because he was behind the scenes with Vince, and I was just doing my job, being on time, wrestling my matches, collecting my paychecks. But I’ll do my best to tell you what I remember.
I got to Atlanta, and the WWE road agent told me I would be working with Steve that night, and that I was going to beat him somehow. But minutes later, everything changed. I heard that Steve had walked out. Went home. With Steve gone, Vince needed to do something quick.
Paul pulled me aside and brought me two steaks from Vince’s office. He always stole a couple of Vince’s afternoon steaks and brought them to me. I never asked if Vince knew. I was just happy to get the prime cut.
As I worked on the steak, Paul explained the new swerve: Vince himself was going to wrestle Ric Flair that night, in Atlanta—a battle between two fiftysomething guys—with the story-line being a winner-take-all bet for Vince’s story-line 50 percent of WWE ownership against Flair’s story-line 50 percent. But just when it looked to the crowd like Flair was going to beat Vince, I’d come down, jump into the ring, and cost Flair the match. Vince would then owe a huge favor to the Next Big Thing.
According to our quickly prepared script, Paul was supposed to call in my favor for me by telling Vince, on national TV, that if I won at King of the Ring 2002, I would get a title shot at the SummerSlam pay-per-view. The fans watching the show didn’t know it yet, but Vince had already decided to make me the youngest WWE Heavyweight Champion in history.
Here I was, just a few months after my official TV debut, and only a year out of college, and I was being set up to take the WWE title in the main event of the second biggest pay-per-view of the year. I had been watching my checks get bigger and bigger every week, and I couldn’t even imagine how much I was about to make from those two events. The main event of a pay-per-view show is as big as it gets in our business.
That’s just it. It was always about business for me. I wasn’t in it for the fame or the glory, though I had some fun with both for a little while. I was in it for the money. I wanted to feed my family, give my parents and my children the best lives that I could provide for them, and get out while I was still relatively young and healthy.
That summer on my rocket ship to the top just flew by. I don’t really remember making my Madison Square Garden debut against Ric Flair, but I sure remember getting paid for it. I don’t remember how many times we went to the UK that summer, but I remember that my paycheck got bigger each and every time I went back. I don’t remember any specifics about the King of the Ring pay-per-view, but I remember it being by far the biggest payday I had to that point in my career.
That’s what happens when you live on the road, and in front of the TV cameras. You can’t tell one town from the other, or one show from the next. They all just blend together. You get up in a hotel that looks like all of the other hotels, drive to the airport in a generic rental car, get on a plane, and don’t care where you land . . . because it’s always the same. The routine gets old really fast, and it never changes.
Sometimes I’d get lucky enough to get into the town early enough so I go could go to a gym, and maybe find a decent meal. After that, though, it would be just killing time until I had to go to the arena. I couldn’t really do much, because fans recognized me everywhere I went. So, most often, I just stayed in my room.
Once I got to the arena, I had to shake everyone’s hand. Because that’s the unwritten law. As if God himself made it the 11th commandment. I hadn’t seen the boys since we all stood around the baggage claim at the airport a few hours before, hoping our bags would come around quickly so we could beat everyone else to the rental car line. But we would always shake hands, and everyone would smile like they were glad to see each other. It was all so insincere and phony