Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [25]
MY FIRST WRESTLEMANIA
Kurt Angle was hurt going into WrestleMania 2003 in Seattle. He wrenched his neck and it was determined he needed surgery. Kurt didn’t want to take a year off, so he found a surgeon in Pittsburgh who had an alternative that involved shaving down the disc instead of the neck-fusion surgery the other wrestlers were getting.
Kurt also didn’t want time off for the standard surgery because he wanted to collect that WrestleMania main-event payday. I can’t say I blame him for that. I wanted that payday, too.
Kurt and I talked a little about our match, but we didn’t talk about it much. We knew we could bring out the best in each other, and I knew I had to protect Kurt because his neck was hurt.
John Laurinaitis was going to be the agent for the match. That means he was the choreographer, the guy who had to know what we were going to do, so the cameras could follow us and cover the match properly. The agent carries the finish of the match from Vince, and then talks with the wrestlers, and gets the entire story of the match together. Then he goes back to Vince and hopes Vince likes it.
John wanted to do something special because a lot of corporate eyes were on him since he was being groomed to take over Jim Ross’s job as the head of talent relations. He was now the agent for the biggest match of the year, the main event of WrestleMania. The WWE title was on the line between two amateur champions, two real wrestlers with legitimate athletic backgrounds. Apparently, that wasn’t enough for John Laurinaitis. He thought the match needed a WrestleMania moment.
At lunch that day, John came up to me and pitched his great finish, which would see me hit the Shooting Star Press to beat Kurt for the WWE title. John had this elaborate concept of me kicking out of everything Kurt could hit me with. Then Kurt kicks out of the F-5. Since we couldn’t beat each other with our best shots, we’d have to dig something out of our bags of tricks. I’d look around, trying to figure out how I could beat Kurt. Then I’d climb to the top rope, and hit the Shooting Star Press to pin Kurt Angle and become a two-time WWE Heavyweight Champion. That was John’s big finish, for the biggest match, on the biggest show of the year.
The only problem was that I hadn’t done the move for over a year, and it was very dangerous for both of us. A lot can go wrong when a three-hundred-pound man inward-reverse-somersaults himself through the air from the top rope, and the margin for error is slim.
John, however, was relentless, “Brock, you gotta finish the match like that. It’s so memorable. It’s your WrestleMania moment.”
I kept thinking my WrestleMania moment was beating Kurt, just like I had beaten everyone else, and winning back the title that had been stolen from me at Survivor Series. Wasn’t that the story we were telling? I didn’t want to do the Shooting Star. It didn’t make any sense to me.
To crank up the pressure on me a little more, Jim Ross sat down with us, and John started saying, “Don’t you think Brock should finish the match with the Shooting Star Press? It’s so impressive, no one has seen him do it for such a long time, it’s such a great move, blah blah blah.”
J.R. thinks about that for a moment and drawls, “Hell, kid, that would be one helluva WrestleMania moment!” They had their routine down pat.
Finally, stupidly, I agreed to do it, but I at least wanted to practice the move a few times first. I should have listened to my gut and just said “NO!” But I went down to the ring to practice hurling myself from the top rope.
John got ahold of some crash mats and piled them in the ring for me so I wouldn’t hurt myself during practice. When I went off that top rope and threw myself into a reverse spin, it was actually kind of cool. I nailed the landing perfectly my first