@SportsByRo drop that exclusive! Word is Brock turned down a bunch of Mania matches and picked Omos
Brock Lesnar has been on a WrestleMania carousel, with about a half dozen options thrown his way since the fall.
We'll start in chronological order based on what we've heard.
Sometime towards the summer or fall of 2022, after the major WWE regime switch, we're told Stone Cold Steve Austin was approached with the possibility of facing Brock Lesnar. Austin would decline, and we're told that a subsequent offer was made for a possible match with Roman Reigns. However, we were also informed that there was a huge disparity in payout, with the pitched Lesnar match nowhere approaching that of the Reigns offer.
Later in the fall, internal WWE documents had Brock Lesnar scheduled to face Gunther. That was listed as the plan as of November 21, heading into Survivor Series, with news leaking to WrestlingNews.co a few weeks later. We weren't given a reason as to why this match was nixed or by who, but sources indicated to us that by the time that news emerged, the match was nixed. It's worth noting the Intercontinental Title wasn't mentioned whatsoever internally for this match. For the past several months, Gunther's plan has been solidly in place, and we're told Gunther/Brock was not considered for any extended period of time.
As one can imagine, Bobby Lashley was also on the table for a possible Brock Lesnar WrestleMania match. We're not sure what happened to cause that one to be off, but that led to Lashley facing Bray Wyatt...who was also pitched for Lesnar.
We're not sure necessarily when Bray Wyatt was pitched as a possible opponent for WrestleMania, but he was mentioning it as recently as right before WWE Elimination Chamber. Sources familiar with the situation claim that Brock himself nixed the idea, though we weren't given specifics as to why.
That leads us to Omos. That is the current plan for WrestleMania, though it was hinted to us that there was an undisclosed "backup," but that it isn't factored into creative plans. We should reiterate, it was never confirmed to us who pitched the match. However, it was confirmed to us that Brock Lesnar personally approved the Omos match.
WrestleVotes had implied on Twitter, and later intimated to Fightful that Vince McMahon was involved with pushing for this match to happen. We haven't confirmed that internally, but sources close to Lesnar -- or at least as close as sources can get to Lesnar -- had indicated that "could be true." Sources in creative since last week said that it wasn't a Vince McMahon decision, and that Vince McMahon has had no contact with creative directly. Last week, Fightful reported that one talent believed McMahon had more of an influence on creative than publicly believed, which was echoed by others on the roster, before WWE told us that wasn't true. That talent has since doubled down on that stance.
