Vince McMahon Really Didn’t Like Brock Lesnar’s ‘Next Big Thing’ Moniker

Brock Lesnar is certainly one of the most decorated pro wrestlers in the history of the industry. Lesnar commands a lot of pull backstage, and it is not hard to see why. He has been called many names and that includes the ‘Next big thing.’ That said, it appears Vince McMahon was not a fan of that moniker at all.

Brock Lesnar has squared off against numerous top WWE Superstars during his time in the company. Upon his main roster debut in 2002, Brock Lesnar was immediately presented as an unstoppable beast.

The Beast Incarnate was called the ‘Next big thing’ as he utterly demolished his competition before winning the WWE Championship after defeating The Rock in his rookie year.

While speaking on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Paul Heyman talked about Brock Lesnar’s initial run in WWE. Paul Heyman revealed that Vince McMahon really disliked Brock Lesnar’s ‘Next big thing’ moniker.

“So I went to Vince and I said, Taz brought me Brock Lesnar. ‘Oh, yeah. Keep an eye on him. I’m wondering what you think of him.’ ‘I’ll tell you two things. Number one, I think he’s the next big thing and number two, we are screwing this up.’ ‘How are we screwing this up? I started telling him what the advice was and he goes, ‘Oh, God damn Paul. Get involved in this right now.’ I said, ‘You want me to produce him?’ ‘Yea, you take over. He’s yours.’ ‘Okay.’ So I started lining up his matches. Here’s what I want you to do and here’s how I want you to display it. I put together a couple of matches of his. It was two that week and I think maybe two the next. The opponents were the same, Spike Dudley and Funaki because I knew they would make him look like what he needed to look like.”

The night before Mania, Vince comes to me and he says, ‘I’m not going to put you with Benoit.’ I’m like, thank God I’m not on television. I didn’t want to go back on TV. I was like, okay, that’s great. Thank you. All right, I found peace in my ability to pull out of the public eye. He says, ‘I’m going to put you with Brock Lesnar’, and I just said, Bingo. Okay, money. Oh, my God. You just gave me a completely new life because I knew, oh my god, you want me to talk for this guy? Okay, this is the easiest job in the world.”

The decision was made to start him the day after Mania and let his first Mania be in the main event a year later and that was supposed to be for the title, but we fast tracked that. We got the title on him by SummerSlam. We were just moving and Dwayne Johnson was going off to Hollywood, so the timing was perfect for us and Steve Austin had left. So it was, wow, we were going to anoint the next big thing. So the first promo that I did with him, I called Brock the next big thing. We’re on the jet that night and Vince turned to me and he goes, ‘What did you call him?’ I said, ‘I called him the next big thing. Brock Lesnar’ and he said, ‘That’s terrible.’ Why would you call him that?’ ‘Well, because he’s the next big thing.’ ‘Terrible name. Why would you stick that on him? Oh, God, people are gonna vomit all over that.’ Thank God by the next week, there were signs in the crowd, the next big thing, and it caught on.”

Brock Lesnar last defeated Cody Rhodes at WWE Night Of Champions and is expected to finish his trilogy match with The American Nightmare at SummerSlam this year. We’ll have to see how WWE will book their feud by then.

What’s your view on what Paul Heyman said? Are you surprised Vince McMahon didn’t like Brock Lesnar’s moniker? Let us know in the comments!