Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Gerald Brisco who is a former NWA Junior World Heavyweight Champion recently revealed the story of Vince McMahon meeting Brock Lesnar for the first time and how he decided to break the developmental budget to sign him.
WWE signed Brock Lesnar for the first time in year 2000 and he spent 2 years on Ohio Valley Wrestling which was the development territory of the promotion back in those days. She had an excellent career in the OVW and had some significant matches with the likes of Batista and John Cena, who were known as Leviathan and Prototype in the OVW.
Gerald Brisco Reveals How Vince McMahon Signed Brock Lesnar
In 2002 he came to the main roster of WWE and the promotion decided to give him a monster push. It is arguably the biggest push for a new star in WWE. In only one year time he defeated the likes of Hulk Hogan, The Rock, the Undertaker The Big Show and Kurt Angle. He was also scheduled to beat Stone Cold Steve Austin but he refused to job and that is a different story.
WWE had him win over almost all the big names of from the Attitude Era and from previous time. In 2004 he left WWE and remained out of the promotion for 8 long years.
In 2012 he returned to the promotion once again hand from 2014 WWE started to push him as a main event star once again after he beat the legendary WrestleMania streak of the Undertaker. He is still a main event star of WWE even at the age of 45.
Gerald Brisco who is a former NWA Junior World Heavyweight Champion recently spoke to SportsKeeda where he revealed the story of Vince McMahon meeting Brock Lesnar for the first time and how he decided to break the developmental budget to sign him. He said;
“We’re at a PPV. Brock has on one of those tight T-shirts for that pull real tight and his bicep looks huge. Vince can’t resist a good bicep. All of a sudden, he (Vince) stopped in his tracks, walks over to Brock, and shakes his hand.
“Vince said, ‘’Young man, congratulations on winning the national championship. Are you ready for showbiz?’ Brock Lesnar looked him right in the eye and said, ‘I’ve been ready all my life.’ What an answer to give the boss. I see that smile come on Vince. That really showed Vince that this guy is ready to do this and wants to do this,” Brisco said.
“Vince and I got together and he said. ‘What’s it going to take?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. That’s J.R.’s department. I got the guy here, now you guys do your job.’ There was resistance. I know Brock was asking for a lot of money. Looking back, it seemed kind of silly with the numbers. I mean, he’s just looking for a six figure number to sign on.”
“I would get complaints from the budget guy that this guy is going to kill our entire developmental budget with one guy. I kept telling him, ‘He’ll make you more money than that. Overlook this one year. This guy is one of those guys that comes along once in a lifetime’, and sure enough he was.
“So they threw all that stuff aside and said, ‘Okay, let’s figure out what it’s going to cost and how we can manipulate it into our budget.’ They figured that out and they finally came to an agreement with Brock. It was probably a two or three month negotiation period back and forth.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription