Paul Heyman had heard Brock Lesnar say he was finished every year for two decades. He says he knew this time was different.
Lesnar confirmed his retirement earlier this month, having lost to Oba Femi inside Hell in a Cell in the main event of SummerSlam night one, then raised Femi’s hand and told the crowd Femi is the future and he is the past. WWE has since moved him to the alumni section of its website.
Heyman, who managed him across his entire WWE career, appeared on Six Feet Under with The Undertaker and was asked whether he had known.
“I’m accepting of the reality of the situation. When you first break in, so many of the veterans would tell you, be accepting of it. Don’t fight against what the reality of the situation is.”
“Brock has always been a realist about himself, and it’s time. To him, I would hear this every year from him. No, this is my last contract. This is it. And he meant it when he said it. And as we got closer, he would then change his mind, or it didn’t take a lot to talk him into it. But I knew that this was it.”
The Undertaker agreed, and made the point that Lesnar had committed to it in advance rather than in the moment.
“Because he knew that this was it, he wasn’t just saying it because he felt it at the moment. This decision was fait accompli.”
What convinced Taker was a phone call he received the day before this episode was recorded. He would not say what it was about.
“That phone call that I got yesterday really meant a lot to me. And I’m not even going to get into what the phone call was about. But the fact that I received that phone call, it said a lot about him.”
He used it to make a wider point about how Lesnar was regarded.
“I don’t think Brock really got enough credit for his passion for the business. Everybody chirps, and everybody has their opinion that they don’t know s*** about what they’re talking about. It was always, oh, it’s always about the money, or they bitched about the dates and everything like that.”
“I think he genuinely, I mean, he had to love this business. And things like that phone call yesterday just kind of reiterated to me, yeah, he understood, he gets it. And it’s kind of sad for me because it’s one less guy that’s going to be around that understands tradition and the way things used to be done.”
Heyman’s answer to that is the sharpest thing in the exchange, because it turns the whole thing back on the man asking.
“He really has come full circle, because everything that he has been doing for and with Oba, you did for and with him.”
He also explained why the call had to happen.
“That phone call was necessary. There is a code of honor in this industry, that if you are in there with someone that you can’t even stand on a personal level, but you stand on the chair and you fall backwards, you know that person is going to catch you. That’s the code of honor that we all sign up for in this industry. Otherwise so many more people would have their faces smashed in.”
“That phone call was a must.”
The parallel Heyman is drawing is a real one. Lesnar’s first WWE run began in 2002, and Taker worked with him repeatedly through it, including the Hell in a Cell match at No Mercy that year and the WrestleMania 30 match twelve years later in which Lesnar ended his undefeated streak.
Femi beat Lesnar in 11:39 at SummerSlam, finishing with Fall From Grace after kicking out of a tombstone onto exposed wood beneath the ring. It was Lesnar’s tenth SummerSlam main event, a company record, and it took place in the state he is billed from. He turned 49 in July.
Heyman was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2024. Taker retired in 2020 and now runs creative for AAA.
