Brock Lesnar has spent the best part of two decades competing against the great and the good of professional wrestling. The Beast was World Champion within months of arriving on the main roster, and before his rookie year was out he’d squared off against The Rock, Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker and more.
While Lesnar has a reputation for being somewhat prickly backstage, it’s often said that he will always do what’s best for business. Namely because the star sees wrestling as a way of making money and having fun, so the bigger the match, the bigger the moment, the bigger the payday. However, according to one WWE backstage figure there was one fellow star Lesnar said he didn’t want to work with.
Brock Lesnar Didn’t Want To Wrestle Kevin Owens
At WWE Backlash in 2017 Jinder Mahal defeated Randy Orton to win the WWE Championship. The shock win paved the way for one of the more unlikely World Title reigns in WWE history. Mahal held the gold all of the way until November where he was pinned by AJ Styles on a special edition of SmackDown in Manchester, England. The switch came shortly before the WWE Champion was meant to square off against Universal Champion Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series.
At the time there was a great deal of speculation that the Mahal had lost the WWE Title at the behest of Brock Lesnar who didn’t want to work with him. Speaking on his podcast, Oh You Didn’t Know, Road Dogg claimed that while Lesnar had input it was because he believed he could have a better match with Styles. As part of his explanation the veteran also revealed that Lesnar did once refuse to work with Kevin Owens.
“I want to clarify, it is not that he did not want to work with Jinder. It’s that he really thought he could have a better match with AJ. So I just wanted that to be clear. Like because look, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Brock saying I don’t want [to], I’m not working with that guy. Well, I did, I did hear that with Kevin Owens, but only him.
Look, Brock is that kind of talent, like I just talked about, has a special relationship with Vince. And so apparently they had a conversation and, and a decision, a creative decision was made. We’re gonna go with AJ Styles as a champion into this tournament at Night of Champions.”
Brock Lesnar was most recently in action at WWE Crown Jewel where he was defeated by Bobby Lashley. At time of writing it is unclear when and where The Beast will return.
If you use any of the quotes from this article please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Inside The Ropes.