Vince McMahon Nearly Had Brock Lesnar Vs. Lennox Lewis MMA Fight Take Place At A WWE Event In 2002

Brock Lesnar’s first professional MMA fight took place in June of 2007, when he defeated Min Soo Kim via submission at a K-1 event, but that wasn’t the first offer Lesnar had to fight.

As everybody knows, before Lesnar made the transition to mixed martial arts, he was one of WWE’s top guys from 2002 to 2004. During his rookie year in 2002, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon wanted to have him fight pro boxing legend Lennox Lewis, who had just knocked out “Iron” Mike Tyson. However, McMahon didn’t want it to be a boxing match — he wanted it to be an MMA rules fight, where Lesnar would unquestionably have the advantage.

Lennox Lewis appeared on TSN’s Off the Record with Michael Landsberg, and he was asked how much money he was offered to fight Brock Lesnar and why he didn’t take the bout. Lewis said that McMahon offered £5 million, which would equal about $8 million, and that he seriously considered taking the fight until he found out that Lesnar wouldn’t be wearing gloves in the bout.

Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer has a different spin on the story, saying that Lewis wanted to fight Lesnar because he could beat up an “easy, fake wrestler” and get paid a lot of money to do so. He later backed out when he found out that it was going to be an MMA fight and that Brock Lesnar was a former NCAA Heavyweight Amateur Wrestling National Champion.

“The gloves thing is not true. It was going to be an MMA rules fight, so the MMA rules then were in place, and we all know what the rules would have been, and Lennox’s side came up with the idea, and they came to Vince [McMahon], Vince didn’t come to them.

“They were looking for an easy payday against a fake wrestler, then when they found out who Brock [Lesnar] was… A lot was said, and a lot of things happened, and then at the end of the day, reality set it that it wasn’t going to be an easy payday, and they started wanting a 15 second ground rule, and no takedowns below the waist, and things like that, which just wasn’t going to happen.”

The rumor of Lesnar vs. Lewis almost taking place has been going around for years, and the only person who had confirmed it up until this point was Kurt Angle, who was supposed to have an MMA fight of his own at that same time against pro boxer Michael Moorer in what would be a four-man MMA tournament between Lesnar, Lewis, Angle, and Moorer. This may have led to a final match between Lesnar and Angle, which definitely would have been something to see.

[Image via Jon Kopaloff / Getty Images]