Welcome back to Dark Match Dungeon! You know the drill by now – this is where we hop on the magical wrestling time machine known as YouTube and find some early, rare footage of wrestling’s big stars. Now that Brock Lesnar has finally started showing up on Raw again to remind the main roster that he could probably kill them all with a nasty thought, I figured we should focus on our current WWE World Heavyweight Champion. I’m guessing you’re all pretty familiar with Brock as he is today… an unhorsed herald of the apocalypse with the tears of Satan running through his veins. A remnant from a collapsed dimension of eternal battle. He’s like fire and ice and rage. He’s like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He’s ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe, and he’s wonderful.
Wait, sorry. I started talking about someone else there. Anyway, here’s Brock Lesnar in his larval form.
What To Look For:
- THE LESNAR GOATEE. I REPEAT, THE LESNAR GOATEE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
- The great reaction for Funaki, an excellent guy who’s training one of my favorite wrestlers ever.
- That pop-up belly-to-belly suplex. Man, why didn’t he hit Cena with a few (dozen) of those at SummerSlam?
- An incredibly emasculated referee who might as well be trying to officiate a hurricane.
- YOU SAW THE GOATEE THOUGH, RIGHT
This happened during a Smackdown taping on March 12, 2002 – a mere six days before Lesnar made his televised debut on Monday Night Raw by splattering Spike Dudley on the canvas. By proxy, I’m guessing this means that Paul Heyman had six days to track down a razor manly enough to get rid of that beard. Stainless steel’s not gonna hack it, you’d probably need adamantium or something.
