At UFC 226, Brock Lesnar made headlines by storming into the Octagon and shoving Daniel Cormier after Cormier’s victory over Stipe Miocic for the UFC Heavyweight Title. Despite the dramatic confrontation, the highly anticipated fight between the two never came to fruition.
Speaking on the “Mightycast with Demetrious Johnson” podcast, Cormier shed light on the situation. He said,
“Brock played us, bro. He really did. He came in with the idea, and because he’s such a massive star, the door was always open for him. I was on the UFC 200 card with Brock—fought Anderson Silva — and we did 1.4 million pay-per-view buys. But WWE ended up paying him more to stay. We went back and forth for a while, and there was a chance it could’ve been me and Brock when I fought Derrick Lewis in New York. But in the end, WWE gave him so much money to keep suplexing guys instead of stepping into a cage where I’d try to kill him. He made the smart call.”
Lesnar did compete at UFC 200, where he defeated Mark Hunt, though the result was later overturned to a no contest after he tested positive for a banned substance.
When asked if a match between the two could eventually happen in WWE, Cormier responded with,
“Brock’s on the banned list right now. He got into a lot of trouble. I’m not going to say on air what he did, but he’s in deep.”
Cormier didn’t specify what the “banned list” referred to or who enforced it. However, Lesnar was named in Janel Grant’s lawsuit against Vince McMahon and WWE, and has not appeared on WWE television since SummerSlam 2023.
(h/t – Fightful)
