Triple H has confirmed that Brock Lesnar did walk out of the July 22nd edition of Friday Night SmackDown before being talked back into appearing on the show.
On July 22nd the wrestling world was rocked by the news that Vince McMahon was retiring from his roles as WWE CEO and Chairman.
The news was broken just hours ahead of Friday Night SmackDown and sent shockwaves through WWE, with no one really sure what was coming next. To add to the chaos it was reported that upon hearing the news, Brock Lesnar walked out of the taping.
Lesnar and McMahon has developed a close friendship over the last few years which seemingly led to The Beast taking the news especially badly. Despite leaving the building and the show causing a rewrite to the episode, Lesnar returned and featured in the final segment as the show went off the air.
Speaking in a new interview with Ariel Helwani ahead of WWE Clash At The Castle, Triple H addressed the situation surrounding Lesnar, confirming that he did indeed walk out of the taping.
“There’s some truth to it. Yeah. Look, you have to understand Brock’s relationship with Vince and Brock’s relationship with combat sports period. He has a relationship with Dana [White] that’s a certain way, he has a relationship with Vince that’s a certain way. But Vince is the devil he knows and Brock is inherently not a trusting person, it’s just how he is. He doesn’t like people. [laughs]
But he’s not a trusting person and I think in that moment, where you just hear Vince is out, [he thinks] ‘Well now what’s going to happen? I’m out of here.’ You know what I mean? I think there was just a moment of that, nothing more, nothing less. It’s not like he looked at it like ‘I don’t like anybody else here, I don’t trust anybody else here.’ There was a moment of ‘I’m going to walk on this’ and then we have conversations, he comes back.”
Triple H also appeared to hint that there had been heat between himself and Lesnar in the past although that is now resolved. He added that any issues which may have stemmed from the walkout have been fixed and Lesnar is happy with WWE.
“I have a great relationship with Brock. Have we had issues over the years because of at a certain point, he was a talent [and] I was a talent? Talent all get along to some degree, but there’s also a very real rivalry between all of them. They all want to be the best, everybody wants to be the best and be in that spot. So yeah, I’m sure there’s some level of mistrust or those things. He’s always had a relationship — Brock’s not a ‘let me just deal with these people over here to take that off your plate, Vince’ [guy]. He wants something, he calls Vince directly. When he has wanted to do a deal, he calls Vince directly.
“There’s a period of time when he first came back where he was dealing with me directly and then, because he and Vince weren’t getting long when he first came back just from past stuff, but over time he rekindled his relationship and now everything goes through Vince.
It’s just a different time now and I think now that he has had a moment to digest it. He digested it a little bit, came back to the building, we did business that night and had long conversations about where we would go next. He liked what he heard and how he’s been dealt with, so it’s all good.”
During the interview, Triple H also took anot-so-subtle dig at AEW while discussing the ‘Wednesday Night War’ between NXT and AEW. The new WWE Head of Creative laughed off suggestions that there was ever a war, scoffing at AEW for only beating WWE’s developmental brand in the ratings.
H/t to WrestleZone for the transcription.