5 Real-life Brock Lesnar stories we learned in 2021

#2 Brock Lesnar indirectly helped Cesaro’s Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win

Cesaro’s Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win at WrestleMania 30 may not have happened if Brock Lesnar had worked a full-time WWE schedule.

Lesnar disappeared from WWE television shortly after he conquered The Undertaker’s 21-match WrestleMania winning streak in 2014. Higher-ups felt it was important to keep Lesnar’s advocate, Paul Heyman, on television after the event, so he formed a short alliance with Cesaro.

Speaking on Talk Is Jericho, Paul Wight (a.k.a. The Big Show) said he was originally supposed to win the inaugural Battle Royal. The winner then switched to Cesaro because WWE officials wanted the Swiss superstar to gain momentum before he paired up with Heyman.

“Basically, he [Cesaro] was a piece to give a chance for Paul Heyman to be on TV until Brock came back,” Wight said. “You know what I mean? So that was the stack of the cards, the stack of the pieces to get to the talent they really wanted to market, they really wanted to use, and they really wanted to depend on for everything.”

Heyman parted ways with Cesaro in July 2014 after representing him for just three months. A month later, the former ECW owner watched on as Brock Lesnar won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship from John Cena in destructive fashion at SummerSlam 2014.