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Vince's "Vito Corleone" offer to Brock


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So Brock claimed in his ESPN interview that he chose to re-sign with WWE because Vince McMahon "gave me an offer I couldn't refuse". So what do we know about Brock's WWE contract?

 

- Dave mentioned in this week's observer that it's similar to his first two contracts.

- The first contract was speculated to be worth around $5 million.

- Brock's first contract in 2012 was for one year, four PPV matches, and a handful of live appearances.

- The second contract signed in 2013 was similar, but seemingly had an additional clause written into it that allowed WWE to pay Brock a fixed figure to make additional appearances. For these additional appearances, Brock would be flown in via WWE's private jet.

- Brock has signed a 3 year contract this time around.

- Brock's initial contract allowed him to display his non-WWE endorsed sponsors on his clothing, a privallage never-before-afforded to any WWE employee. His deal with these sponsor's seems to have expired as he's phased out the Deathclutch apparal and no longer sports Jack Link's or Jimmy John's logos, instead wearing his own WWE branded shirts.

- UFC doubled their initial offer to re-sign Brock this year. Brock's first stint with UFC was one of the largest signings in history of the organisation, even a reduced offer based on his age, etc would surely have at least matched WWE's offer. Could we expect that UFC offered Lesnar the best part of $10 million?

 

Based on the available information, what does everybody think Vince actually put on the table to persuade Brock to re-sign with WWE, but not just that, but actually commit to three years with them? There has to be some creative boons to it as well.

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Basics as I would see it:

 

-Around 30 appearances a year, including four PPVs, with certain PPVs possibly being mandatory due to market size and extra appearances being paid in the $100-250k range.

-Base salary close to $5 million per year as previously said.

-Creative veto power, I'm guessing, probably with the ability to have preferences on who he'd like to work with.

-I don't think the advertising stuff is as big a deal right now, but I imagine he's gonna take a bit more on merchandise than most guys on the roster. At this point, I'm not sure if that's a part of the $5 million per year, but it wouldn't be a surprise if it was extra.

 

I actually think UFC would have offered him a similar base salary, but the incentives wouldn't have been worth it to him, I don't think. I think Vince offered him a 3 year, $12-$15 million base with a ton of creative freedom, big time overages on appearances and a bigger percentage on merchandise to offset his previous sponsor losses. Nothing UFC could offer outside of outright paying him $7.5 million a year to start would have done it, and there's a good chance if he had to do three years that Dana would have asked for at least 10 fights.

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Basics as I would see it:

 

-Around 30 appearances a year, including four PPVs, with certain PPVs possibly being mandatory due to market size and extra appearances being paid in the $100-250k range.

-Base salary close to $5 million per year as previously said.

-Creative veto power, I'm guessing, probably with the ability to have preferences on who he'd like to work with.

-I don't think the advertising stuff is as big a deal right now, but I imagine he's gonna take a bit more on merchandise than most guys on the roster. At this point, I'm not sure if that's a part of the $5 million per year, but it wouldn't be a surprise if it was extra.

 

I actually think UFC would have offered him a similar base salary, but the incentives wouldn't have been worth it to him, I don't think. I think Vince offered him a 3 year, $12-$15 million base with a ton of creative freedom, big time overages on appearances and a bigger percentage on merchandise to offset his previous sponsor losses. Nothing UFC could offer outside of outright paying him $7.5 million a year to start would have done it, and there's a good chance if he had to do three years that Dana would have asked for at least 10 fights.

 

Looks about right. Brock will definitely be appearing at Summerslam, Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. They went with NOC last year, but I could see TLC or Money In The Bank as possibilities this year.

 

I seem to recall Dave saying that Brock's previous contract had a WWE title run written into it. We know he got it, the circumstances though were changed. Originally he was supposed to face Daniel Bryan at Summerslam and take the title from him, then move into the program with Cena.

 

In terms of Brock's creative power, he seems like he's cool with losing matches as long as they keep to their end of the bargain, ie, money. He lost his return match to John Cena, there was no real talk of reluctance to do so on his part at the time. Pretty sure it's been mentioned that Brock was originally going to lose the match to Taker, until Vince made the call to end the streak. He's always seemed willing to take losses, although they are high profile matches and he's strongly booked prior to and post-loss, so there isn't any real character destruction.

 

I guess he's bound to have a big say on who he works with, but I don't think he's bothered about winning or losing, it's more long term booking (and retaining value in his brand so he can continue bringing in the dough). I fully expect Brock to work matches with Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, and possibly Daniel Bryan within the next year.

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By all accounts Brock has been in full Rasheed Wallace CTC mode on this run. As long as the checks clear he isn't going to create problems with creative. If they wanted him to job to Heath Slater he may very well laugh and take his loss without batting an eye. If anything, the exorbitant price tag may force them to make sure they're maximizing his value as opposed to everyone else on the roster, who's just an asset.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wade was saying that Brock's walk out a month ago was over the money he was to be given for his merchandise sales.

 

I think, as mentioned above, the UFC offer would have asked Brock to commit to more fights than he was willing to do considering his age. And--again, pure speculation--they are supposed to be stepping up drug testing. That may have had a role in it.

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In terms of Brock's creative power, he seems like he's cool with losing matches as long as they keep to their end of the bargain, ie, money. He lost his return match to John Cena, there was no real talk of reluctance to do so on his part at the time. Pretty sure it's been mentioned that Brock was originally going to lose the match to Taker, until Vince made the call to end the streak. He's always seemed willing to take losses, although they are high profile matches and he's strongly booked prior to and post-loss, so there isn't any real character destruction.

 

 

In three years, Brock has only lost two matches IIRC. Cena at Extreme Rules, and HHH at Mania '29. The Cena loss was overshadowed by the monumental beating he gave Cena that night. The HHH loss pretty much had to happen. But, Brock got both of those losses back in very convincing fashion.

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I don't think it's because he cares about whether he loses or not. But if you're going to pay a dude around $1 million per match you'd better get all the fucking value out of him that you can, thus he shouldn't really be losing a whole lot.

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Brock has been very vocal about how he is used, and often blows off the creative writer assigned to him, and often works with Hunter or Vince with a writer. Which is smart and something that he should do.

 

His UFC was never a huge "guarantee" deal. In his previous deal he was only guaranteed 500K per fight and a scaled percentage of pay per view buys.

 

From what I understand about his negotiations with UFC, is that Dana did offer him a great deal for three fights. But negotiations did not really go that far as both almost knew that it was more of a negotiation ploy than anything. When Brock made the appearance at the UFC event Dana and Lorenzo had a very good idea that Brock was going to stay with WWE. But Dana and Lorenzo both like Brock and were willing to work with him because they got a ton of press over it and Brock helped make them a TON of money including a buy rate record that looks to be safe for a very long time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Brock has been very vocal about how he is used, and often blows off the creative writer assigned to him, and often works with Hunter or Vince with a writer. Which is smart and something that he should do.

 

It speaks to one reason to have 30 writers on staff: keep grousing midcarders at a distance from the decision makers.

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Maybe Brock chose wrestling because it's fake and for the most part he won't get hurt like he would in a real fight? That seems to me like the most obvious reason.

Yeah. No one in pro wrestling is going to kick Brock in the diverticulitis like Overeem did.

Haha, it's like having a choice between being in an actual boxing match or being in a Rocky movie. Or playing in the NBA or being on the Harlem Globetrotters.
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