Wade Barrett Tells Funny Story About How Brock Lesnar Dealt With A Prying Fan At A Gym
The man who used to deliver bad news to WWE each week, Wade Barrett, was a recent guest on Inside The Ropes. Barrett took some time during the discussion to give some backstage details about how the current WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar carries himself behind the scenes.
"Brock was a strange one because, first of all, he never really did the live events," Barrett began. "And I know you guys mainly see the stuff that's on TV which is RAW and SmackDown, but on top of that, we're doing four – five – six if we're on tour – events per week. So the majority of wrestling we do and the majority of time that we spend around WWE, and the locker room, and the guys is on the non-televised stuff, also known as the 'house shows'. So he wasn't really at any of those [live events]. And even the TV stuff, he'd be there like ten weeks a year or something like that. He just wouldn't be around very often. When he did get to the arenas, he would have his own private bus that he would kind of hangout on. And maybe you'd see him for like thirty minutes before his match, or went out for his promo segment or whatever, but he didn't really hang around with the guys too much... Always a cool guy but he very much kept to himself."
Barrett was able to provide one story about Brock Lesnar while they were both mutually active in WWE. He noted how starstruck the patrons of a certain Gold's Gym were to see Brock in person for their first time.
"In my entire time on the road, I saw Brock in the gym once. We were all working out at a Gold's Gym somewhere in Texas and there was a bunch of us there prior to the show," Barrett explained. "It was midday or something like that, we had to be at the arena at 2 PM. So we're working out and our plan is to finish up about 1:15, hit the showers, shower up quickly, put our suits on, get in the car, and drive to the building so we can get there for 2 o'clock. Right about 1 o'clock, we're all finishing up our workouts; I'm there, I think Heath [Slater] is there, Justin Gabriel is there, Fandango, Bray Wyatt, as I said, 7 or 8 of just regular superstars there.
"Just as we were about to finish up, Brock walks into the gym. I've never seen him walk into a gym before, and everyone working out in the gym stops what they're doing – but I'm not talking about the wrestlers here, I'm talking about all these other people here packed out in this Gold's Gym – they just stop what they're doing and they stare at this animal who's just walked in. 'What is that?!'"
Barrett would go on to talk about a superfan that essentially stalked Brock around this particular gym they were visiting in Texas. This lead to an intense confrontation in the gym's locker room that would ultimately inspire a running joke in WWE for years to come.
"Now, obviously in gyms you get a lot of big bodybuilders, and steroid guys, and tough looking guys, and stuff like that, but nobody has ever seen anything like Brock," Barrett said. "People either knew him because he was in WWE, or they knew him because he was this UFC Heavyweight Champion, or they were just looking at him like they had never seen a human being that looked like that before, but everyone was staring at him. Well we didn't think too much of it and we go, 'Hey Brock, how are you doing?' And we leave and head off to the showers and he goes off and starts working out, presumably. So we're finishing up in the changing rooms, we're all putting our suits on and stuff, finishing doing up our shirts, and then all of a sudden, Brock walks into the changing room and he looks at us and goes, 'This kid keeps following me around every time I go to a machine! He's next to me every time I go to a bench, he always comes and sits next to me! He's really pissing me off.' We go, 'Oh okay, see you at the building, Brock, whatever,' And then Brock walks past us and goes into the back room, the toilet area of the changing room. He goes around the corner.
"Anyway, we're finishing up and then suddenly, this nervous, sixteen-year-old, nerdy kid pops his head around the locker room," Barrett continued. "Sometimes we get that and people are excited because they've seen us on TV and we're wrestlers for WWE, and they want to meet us. This kid did not care about us at all, it was like we were invisible. He's sneaking around, he's looking past us, and then suddenly, he spots the toilet area which was just around the corner from where we're at. This kid kind of stumbles past, walks around the corner, and disappears. A small part of me wanted to tell this kid, 'No, this isn't the day.' But another part of my brain thought, 'Ya know, the boy has to learn.' So I didn't say anything; I just kind of looked at Bray Wyatt and he kind of shrugged his shoulders. We all knew that something bad was about to happen. We were just waiting; we were frozen in time. Suddenly, all you hear is, 'Are you trying to see my f–king penis?!' Followed by this terrified sixteen-year-old running out of there, through the door, never to be seen again."
Barrett tried to justify the kid's behavior, explaining how overwhelming it must have been to see a celebrity you admire so much walking around your local gym. He noted how amused he was at Brock's word choice in the heat of the moment.
"Now, I kind of guess what happened here was this kid – nobody intentionally tries to see Brock's penis. But this kid was sixteen-years-old, for him, Superman had just walked in there. He just wanted to absorb the aura of Brock Lesnar and experience what it was like to be in the same room as him. And he was just overcome, overwhelmed by this monster of a man being around him. He just wanted to be as close to him as he could in some way. But the thing that always makes me laugh about the situation was Brock, in his anger, 'Are you trying to see my f–king penis?' It's like he got really polite at the very end and just realized that this is some poor sixteen-year-old kid. He didn't say, 'Are you trying to see my d–k?', or whatever would come out naturally. Just the fact that he said penis made that story for me. And that subsequently became a quote [and running joke] in the locker room of WWE. If you're using the bathroom and Bo Dallas walks around the corner, 'Are you trying to see my penis?!' Or whatever it was."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Inside The Ropes with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.