WCW Turned Down Brock Lesnar Before WWE Reached Out
It was probably for the best.
Eric Bischoff was mentally frazzled by 1999.
The WCW chief wasn't thinking straight when old AWA boss Verne Gagne called him one afternoon to recommend a young rookie. That 'young rookie' was Brock Lesnar, and ol' Verne thought that Bischoff might be interested.
Not quite.
On his '83 Weeks' podcast, Eric admitted that he was too caught up in the politics miring WCW at the time and said he wasn't hiring new talent. That, in retrospect, was the best thing that could've happened to Brock; had he signed on at WCW in late-'99, Lesnar could've ended up in the promotion's awful Hardcore Title division or been part of the upstart Natural Born Thrillers faction.
Bischoff did agree on the pod that Brock dodged a bullet. He was too worn out to pay attention to what Gagne was selling at the time, and needed a well-earned break from all the bullsh*t internal fighting that was going on. So, luckily for Lesnar, Eric passed on him.
Brock would go on to sign with WWE in 2000, and was WWE Champion by the summer of 2002. Who knows what might've happened had he put pen to paper on a WCW deal.