Brock Lesnar's backstage reaction to career-threatening botch at WrestleMania 19 revealed
It has been 17 years since Brock Lesnar won the WWE championship by defeating Kurt Angle in the main event of WrestleMania 19. This was The Beast's second title, with the first one coming at SummerSlam 2002 when he defeated The Rock.
ESPN recently contacted Gerald Briscoe for a feature on Lesnar, with the former WWE executive and talent scout opening up on Lesnar's major botch in the closing moments of the aforementioned match.
Briscoe stated that soon after the match was over, and both Lesnar and Angle came backstage, Lesnar refused to be checked on by trainers and doctors. Producer Michael Hayes came up to Briscoe and told him to "control his boy". Briscoe went over to Lesnar and told him to calm down, after which the two embraced one other.
All of a sudden, producer Michael Hayes came hollering at me, "Brisco, you need to go control your boy." I went over there and I said, "Calm down, Brock." We both embraced and I said, "You OK?"
He said, "My damn neck." I said, "Let's go look at it, let's get you some medical help." He didn't want any. I said, "You've gotta have it." We ended up spending the night at the hospital. I stayed with him, of course.
Briscoe said Lesnar was mad at the fact he let the botch happen, even after perfectly executing the move on several occasions previously. The big difference here, was that Lesnar used to weigh around 265-270 lbs when he started. Now though, he was a whopping 300-315 lbs and was nervous about performing the move in such a high-stakes match.
Briscoe had urged Lesnar to not perform the move, but he responded by saying that people wouldn't think he was good enough to do other manoevures had he not executed it.
Lesnar didn't want to stay in hospital and was seething with rage. After receiving the necessaryod medical care, he calmed down and spent the night there before being discharged the following morning.
Thankfully, Lesnar didn't suffer a career-threatening injury that night, and made his SmackDown return soon afterwards. He began a feud with John Cena, and defeated him at Backlash 2003. Lesnar spent another year in WWE, before departing the promotion for the first time, following his WM20 match against WWE Hall of Famer, Goldberg.