Death Clutch - Brock Lesnar [31]
I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m a control freak. When it comes to business, I want to know what’s going on, when, where, and why. This is my living. If I have to lose for the good of the company, I will, but it’ll be on my terms. I thought I had a good relationship with Vince, but obviously I was wrong.
When it came to my business with the WWE, the one person I thought I could trust was Vince. When I first started we had that handshake, and I put my future in his hands. He ran the company. He controlled everything. I knew that if I couldn’t count on him to tell it to me straight, I was screwed. I could play the game with everybody else on the roster and in the office, but I couldn’t play games with the owner of the company. That’s a fight I’m going to lose every time because HE writes the checks. HE makes all the rules.
If I’m Vince’s top guy . . . the guy he’s relying on . . . his go-to guy . . . his main event . . . why would he lie to me? Why would he play this kind of game with me, in Miami, for no reason? Just to mess with my head? Just to do it for the sake of doing it?
To Vince, it may have been just another day in the wrestling business, but to me it was a lot more than that. That day was the first in a chain of events that led to my departure from the WWE.
The wheels were still spinning in my head about getting screwed over in Miami, when Vince tells me he wants me to lose the WWE title to Eddie Guerrero. Of course, Vince put his own twist on it: “Goldberg’s going to interfere, give the win to Eddie, and that’ll set up this huge match at WrestleMania between the two of you. Lesnar vs. Goldberg is so big it will sell itself, you don’t need the WWE title involved.”
Of course, Vince kept telling me how good it would be for my character to drop the title to Eddie, and then take on Goldberg. “You can beat Goldberg in thirty seconds. He’s leaving, so I don’t care. We can get Austin involved, and it’s going to be the biggest match on the card. WrestleMania 20. Madison Square Garden. Brock Lesnar vs. Bill Goldberg, and Stone Cold Steve Austin will be out there as the special guest referee. It’s big box office, it’s pure money.”
I knew what this was about. Vince was selling me hard on WrestleMania because he wanted to get the title on Eddie Guerrero. Vince kept telling me how the Latino audience was growing, and this was the right move for business. But after what happened in Miami, our relationship had already gone south. I never believed another word that came out of Vince’s mouth. I no longer had any faith whatsoever in the Federation.
But Vince isn’t the only one that screwed me.
LEAVING WWE
I was getting angrier and angrier. I couldn’t get any time off. My body was hurting. I was going through a lot of personal drama. I was pissed off about the way things went down in Miami, and I certainly wasn’t happy about being replaced by Eddie Guerrero as WWE Champion.
I remembered how every step up the ladder was worth more money to me, and now I’m looking at going back down that ladder?
I don’t talk to a lot of people from the company nowadays, and it was the same story during my time in WWE. I didn’t like how untrustworthy so many of the boys were, but I thought there were a few people I could count on. Kurt Angle was supposed to be one of those people. Then something happened that caused me to wonder.
I had many conversations with Kurt, but I soon found out those conversations didn’t remain strictly between us. It’s unfortunate I had to learn that lesson the hard way.
I knew that at any given moment, anybody in that locker room would stab you in the back if they could get away with it. They all wanted a better place on the card. Everyone wanted to make more money, to have the best matches, get the biggest