Before Brock Lesnar was “The Beast,” Paul Heyman reveals that some WWE officials wanted his client to play a Russian character.
Upon signing to WWE in 2000, Brock Lesnar reported the company’s developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW). After training there for a while, Lesnar was eager to begin his ascent to the main roster. Eventually, Lesnar grew weary of waiting for his call-up, so he left OVW and returned back to his home in Minnesota, telling WWE to call him when they’re ready to start integrating him into television.
During a recent appearance on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin, Lesnar’s former advocate, Paul Heyman recalled Lesnar’s journey to the main roster. Amid the conversation, Heyman recounted Lesnar’s trip back home, and an interesting pitch he was presented after completing a series of dark matches.
“[There were] reports coming out of Louisville, and he’s not getting called up to the main roster. And I couldn’t understand what the delay was. I’d seen him a couple times. They had Jesse Ventura come out to the ring with him in Minneapolis. Why are we not going with this? My God, He’s 24 years old, let’s go — 23 at the time. So they bring him to a TV, they’re starting him on dark matches because he had enough. He left Louisville, and he went back to Minnesota. And he said, ‘Whenever you’re ready for me, call me. There’s nothing more for me to learn in Louisville. I’m ready to go. You don’t want to use me. My contract is going to run up. I’m going to go find something else to do with my life.’ And finally, they decided to pull the trigger.”
“They bring him for a couple of dark matches, which are the matches that happened before we go live on television or taped the actual show for broadcast. So we get a look — the cameras are there. We can rewatch it. The creative people are there, all the people there that need to get eyeballs on you. So, Brock does a dark match and the next day he’s doing another dark match. And all these old-time producers, they go, ‘You should be a Russian. You should just stand in the middle of the ring and let people bounce off you.'”
Despite having a bigger stature, Heyman believes Lesnar’s agility in the ring was unparalleled. “By the way, for someone who doesn’t have the explosiveness of Brock Lesnar, the speed of Brock Lesnar, the agility of Brock Lesnar, the mobility of Brock Lesnar, [that] is a wonderful, wonderful piece of advice for someone that looks like him,” Heyman continued.
“What was going to separate Brock from everyone else that even had massive size and density to them is that Brock Lesnar could move like fricking lightning. No one could move like him. No one. The explosiveness that he displayed from takeoff was just — I’ve seen it now for 21 years. It frightens me every time, just frightening. If he’s standing in the center of the ring and he decides to launch himself and hit the ropes, he will hit those ropes with such velocity from the center of the ring. It’s like 0 to 60 in a second and a half. There’s no one of that explosiveness and that speed.”
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