One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY Month Of The WWE Attitude Era
12. May 2000 | What Did Anybody Expect?
Brock Lesnar left WWE in 2004 because he loathed and was made miserable by the life of a travelling full-time wrestler.
He returned in 2012 only because - through WWE’s desperation for name value and his headline-grabbing run as a UFC fighter - he had the leverage to do whatever he liked. He was despised in turn by many hardcore WWE fans throughout the remainder of the decade because he didn’t care. He showed up whenever he liked, which wasn’t very often. Hysterically, some fans hated the idea of Brock as World/Universal champion because he didn’t adhere to the “must defend the title every 30 days rule”, as if Vince McMahon treated literally anything with a shred of sanctity back then.
Lesnar was packaged as a mercenary deliberately in the mid-2010s. At one point, he even asked Paul Heyman why he would ever watch Monday Night Raw. This was the heat. The idea was for Lesnar to lose to a top full-time babyface and rid WWE of him. The issue is that fans hated that babyface, Roman Reigns, even more. Brock was a mercenary all along. The events of WrestleMania 20 scanned as a shock at the time. Those who paid attention to Brock Lesnar from the beginning were less than surprised.
In the May 2000 issue of Sports Illustrated For Kids, various athletes were asked if they considered pro wrestling to be “fake”. Lesnar - who was actively training as a pro wrestler as WWE begged him to sign for them - described pro wrestling as “degrading”.
He had them over a barrel before day one.