On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer provided an in-depth account of the time WWE nearly promoted a legitimate shoot fight between Brock Lesnar and Heavyweight Boxing Champion Lennox Lewis.
The proposed fight would have taken place during Lesnar’s first run with the company, likely around 2002 or 2003. The idea was born out of two conflicting motivations: Vince McMahon’s desire to make Lesnar a superstar and Lennox Lewis’s desire for an easy paycheck.
Meltzer explained that while Lesnar was the WWE Champion, he had not yet reached the popularity levels of the Attitude Era’s biggest stars. McMahon believed a real fight would prove Lesnar’s legitimacy to the world.
“Vince was trying to figure out, ‘What can I do to get Brock to the Steve Austin level?’ That’s what I want my top guy to be, and he’s not there,” Meltzer said. “He was trying to figure out how can we get him there? He’s such a badass. Look at what he looks like.”
McMahon’s theory was that in a real fight, a wrestler would dominate a boxer.
“Basically, Vince’s [thought was], in a shoot fight, Brock is gonna kill the guy,” Meltzer said. “Back in those days, the wrestling people felt like a wrestler always beats a boxer. Takes him down, beats him up.”
While McMahon was looking to build a star, Lennox Lewis approached WWE with a different goal.
“Lennox Lewis was looking for what he thought was an easy payday, so he contacted WWE,” Meltzer explained. “It was just like, ‘How about we do a match? I’ll take on one of your pro wrestlers.’ He wanted to shoot. Easy payday in a real fight against these fake pro wrestlers.”
To ensure the public knew the fight was legitimate, McMahon wanted the event to be held in Las Vegas under the jurisdiction of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
“Vince did personally [contact Vegas asking], ‘What do I need to do to get this approved?'” Meltzer recalled. “It was going to be essentially MMA fights. Mark Ratner, who now works for UFC but at the time was head of the commission, told Vince, ‘This is the deal. We will approve this… but it has to be real, and every match on the show has to be real. You cannot do a mixed show… You can’t do five pro wrestling matches and two shoots.'”
Because of this regulation, WWE planned a double main event featuring two shoot fights: Brock Lesnar vs. Lennox Lewis and Kurt Angle vs. Boxer Michael Moorer.
“He wanted Kurt Angle and Michael Moorer for the same reason,” Meltzer said. “Make these fans think that, ‘Okay, you may think wrestling is fake, but Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar, these are freaking real-life badasses.'”
The negotiations collapsed once Lewis’s camp did their due diligence on Lesnar. After realizing Lesnar was a legitimate NCAA Champion, Lewis’s team demanded significant rule changes to protect their fighter.
“Lennox Lewis studies this guy, Brock Lesnar, who he’d never heard of, and all of a sudden his camp goes, ‘We need to change the rules of this thing,'” Meltzer said. “So they come up with all these rules, like no takedowns below the waist, and maybe 15 seconds on the ground and we do automatic stand-ups. At that point, it just fell completely apart because Lennox Lewis found out that it wasn’t going to be such an easy payday.”
The story was kept largely secret at the time, though Meltzer reported on it in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Years later, Meltzer attempted to ask Lesnar about the failed fight during a phone interview, leading to an abrupt end to the conversation.
“I was on the phone with him… and I said, ‘Oh yeah, but what about the Lennox Lewis thing?'” Meltzer said. “He just goes, ‘Dave, the conversation is over.’ And he hung up.”
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