Vince McMahon announced his retirement from WWE on July 22 hours before WWE SmackDown was set to go live.
Shortly after Vince's announcement, it was reported that Lesnar had walked out of the building. He was pulled from advertising on WWE digital platforms. Lesnar ended up appearing at the end of the broadcast with Michael Cole and Pat McAfee acting surprised.
When asked by Ariel Helwani of BT Sport if Brock had indeed walked out, Triple H confirmed Brock briefly left the building.
"There is some truth to it," he said. "You have to understand Brock's relationship with Vince. If you look at Brock's relationship across combat sports, he has a relationship with Dana (White) that is a certain way, a relationship with Vince that is a certain way. Vince is the devil he knows. Brock is inherently not a trusting person. It's just how he is, he doesn't like people. In that moment, when you hear, 'Vince is out.' 'Now what's going to happen? 'I'm out of here.' There was a moment of that, nothing more, nothing less. Not like he looked at it as, 'I don't like anybody else here, I don't trust anybody else here.' It was a moment of 'I'm gonna walk on this,' and then we have conversations, he comes back. I have a great relationship with Brock. Have we had issues over the years? Yeah. At a certain point, he was a talent and I was a talent. Talent all get along, to some degree, but there is also very real rivalry between all of them. They all want to be the best, everybody wants to be the best and be in that spot. I'm sure there is some level of mistrust or those things. He's always had a relationship...Brock is not a, 'let me just deal with these people over here.' If he wants something, he calls Vince directly. When he's wanted to do a deal, he's called Vince directly. There was a period of time, when he first came back, that he was dealing with me directly, because he and Vince weren't getting along when he first came back just from past stuff. Over time, he rekindles his relationship with Vince and now everything goes through Vince. it's just a different time now and now that he has had a moment to digest it, he digested it a little, came back to the building, we did business that night, had long conversations about where we go next, he liked what he heard, liked how he's been dealt with, and it's all good."
Lesnar not only showed up to WWE SmackDown, but he remained on the WWE SummerSlam card where he challenged Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship in a Last Man Standing match.
Lesnar lost the bout and hasn't returned to WWE TV.
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