10 Fascinating WWE Backstage Facts About Brock Lesnar
9. He Didn't Enjoy His First Run
Brock Lesnar's first run in WWE lasted from March 18th, 2002 until March 14th 2004.
He won the WWE Championship three times and main-evented WrestleMania XIX, but he was still only with the company for just under two years. It's such a short time for somebody who accomplished as much as Lesnar, yet it's a run that helped transition WWE from the Attitude Era to Ruthless Aggression.
So, where did it all go wrong?
There's plenty of testimony from other wrestlers that Brock didn't enjoy being on the road. Kurt Angle once saw him looking at a photo of his family on a flight to one of their 300+ shows of the year and knew something was up.
Even though he'd just signed a new contract, Lesnar decided he wanted to leave after WrestleMania XX. That meant getting the WWE Championship off of him, then feeding him to an also departing Goldberg. Vince McMahon sent him packing with a no-compete clause and the Next Big Thing was gone.
Brock's said that he didn't feel at home in WWE at the time. He was young when he joined, he didn't enjoy the culture backstage, and he was desperate to get home whenever he could. Hearing about how Curt Hennig terrorised him on the plane ride from hell, you can understand where he was coming from.
The Beast Incarnate told Newsday in 2022 that WWE simply wasn't enough for him at the time. He needed so sow his sporting oats, so he tried out for the NFL, spent some time wrestling in Japan, and then settled down in the UFC before making his WWE return in 2012.