Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [28]
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