Shelton Benjamin has re-emerged on the WWE roster in the tag team scene on Smackdown with Chad Gable, but some don't know that he originally worked WWF dark matches alongside current WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar.
Lesnar and Benjamin both attended the University of Minnesota, where Benjamin coached Brock. When speaking to Sean Waltman on his X-Pac 12360 podcast recently, "The Gold Standard" opened up on the friendly bit of competitiveness between the duo.
What’s funny is most people don’t realize that one; I was a collegiate heavyweight wrestler. Same weight class as Brock (Lesnar). What they also don’t realize is that when Brock came to Minnesota, he was replacing me on the team; but I was still there as a coach… He was just replacing me on the team. There wasn’t a bit of jealousy. I was actually happy, like wow look what we got now. I had to wrestle him every day but again that wasn’t a problem because I had been wrestling heavyweights since I was in the tenth grade. Of course, I never wrestled anyone with the explosiveness of Brock. That to me was his biggest gift. He wasn’t a technical marvel he didn’t have to be. He was explosive, he was strong, but he was also an extremely hard worker and was always willing to learn and there was no quit in the guy, as we all know. So for three hours a day, every day, for over a year and a half me and Brock would be going at it and like I said earlier, sometimes Brock would beat me, sometimes I would beat him and sometimes we would stalemate for three hours.
Lesnar and Benjamin would team together in Ohio Valley Wrestling and become OVW Southern Tag Team Champions, and also teamed together on about a half-dozen WWE dark matches. When they got to the main roster, however, the two would be adversaries when Benjamin joined "Team Angle.
You can hear the full podcast with Waltman at this link.
