Possible reason why WWE is being secretive about free agent Brock Lesnar's return
One of the big stories in WWE lately is the fact that Brock Lesnar's merchandise was removed from the WWE store. Not only that, but PWInsider later confirmed that Brock Lesnar is now a free agent after his WWE contract expired.
With no plans for Brock Lesnar to return to WWE until possibly 2021, many fans wondered what was in the details of Brock Lesnar's WWE contract and what led to nobody renewing the deal.
Tom Colohue spoke about free agent Brock Lesnar to Korey Gunz on the live edition of Dropkick DiSKussions and explained why it took WWE until SummerSlam to pull Brock Lesnar's merchandise down despite his contract expiring in June:
"He [Brock Lesnar] is a true and clear free agent at this point. He has no responsibilities with WWE. His contract expired around June. He did have obligations - as I mentioned, he was booked for SummerSlam, so his contract was extended on a non-contract basis. That is why the merch deal expired after SummerSlam and not after his contract expired. You don't have a separate contract and then a merchandise contract. That's not how it works out. Once that ended, we come to a stop.
Colohue also mentioned that WWE is planning to bring back Brock Lesnar once the pandemic cools down and revealed the surprising reason why WWE will be silent about the contract as they were with Rey Mysterio:
When it comes to his future, he is going to be back in WWE in no time. Once the pandemic has cleared and to a level where they can have fans and they can start spending money again, they will bring back Brock Lesnar. We've all heard stories about Rey Mysterio's new contract. They don't want to be seen spending money after they released so many people."
When is a realistic timeline for Brock Lesnar to return to WWE?
It's no secret that Brock Lesnar uses UFC and WWE against each other to leverage better pay from one party. On most occasions, it's Vince McMahon who ends up shelling out more money to keep him in WWE.
This time around, it's more than likely that Brock Lesnar will use UFC as leverage, with UFC President Dana White stating that he would happily book a Brock Lesnar-Jon Jones fight if both men were interested.
Either way, we fully expect to see Brock Lesnar back inside the squared circle at some point in early 2021. That seems to be a realistic period where WWE can slowly start to let fans in again.