Rod Pedersen, former CFL announcer for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, runs a sports blog and received the opportunity to interview Brock Lesnar earlier this month while he was the keynote speaker at the Assiniboia Sports Celebrity Dinner & Auction. The interview, which took place on April 13, The Beast talks about why he doesn’t do too many public appearances and interviews, how he and The Rock are good friends and talks about a hilarious time when he body slammed Big Show. Some of Pedersen’s notes from the interview are below:
– Before long he was doing 300 shows per year around the globe and while he was making millions, it became a real grind. However he was never afraid of hard work. Lesnar told the amusing/disgusting story of how, one night during a show in South Africa, The Big Show had food poisoning. Lesnar slammed him to the canvas and his opponent exploded with diarrhea all over him!
– In the mid 2000’s Lesnar got a tryout with the Minnesota Vikings and spent part of the season on the practice roster as a defensive tackle. The Vikings wanted to allocate him to Europe but he’d already been there, made millions, and wasn’t interested in going back for peanuts. That was the end of his football career, however he’d also played in high school.
– Around that time the UFC was getting popular and he incessantly called President Dana White about an opportunity however his calls were ignored. So Lesnar hopped on a plane to Las Vegas for a UFC show. He loved what he saw, realized he missed that type of fighting, and jumped into the cage in the middle of a fight. That caught Dana White’s attention, and the rest is history.
– Lesnar said he intentionally keeps his contracts with Vince McMahon and Dana White short so that he can jump back and forth between the two leagues.
– I asked him who’d win a street fight between he and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Lesnar scoffed, and said the two are good friends. The Rock has asked Lesnar to appear in his movies but the deal is that The Rock always has to win their fights and for that reason, Lesnar’s always said no. But the funniest quote was “The difference between us is that he gets pedicures and I don’t.”
– Why Maryfield, SK? It’s because the demands on his time from the WWE and UFC are so astronomical that he likes to “hideout” in small-town Saskatchewan, which makes sense.
– What’s next for Lesnar? He’s been invited to fight Daniel Cormier in a UFC heavyweight bout this summer but he hasn’t made his mind up. In any news stories I’ve seen on the match, Dana White has left it up to Lesnar whether or not he wants to fill the card.