During the 2018 Royal Rumble, Brock Lesnar, Kane, and Braun Strowman squared off for the Universal Championship. The Beast eventually prevailed by pinning the Big Red Machine, but there was another moment from the otherwise forgettable bout which has lived on.
A clip from the match went viral showing Lesnar hitting the Monster Among Men with what looked like a pretty stiff right hand. Now, Strowman has shed some light on what happened and why.
"I got a little overzealous with him and he had to check me. At the end of the day, it’s two big dominant dudes out there going at it, and things happen, this ain’t ballet," he tells Chris Van Vliet.
"I stiffed him on accident with a knee and he wasn’t happy about it so he clobbered me on the side of the head. I like to think I’m the only human on Earth that’s taken a right hand from Brock and didn’t go night night, I went 20 more minutes in the match."
"It didn’t feel good," Strowman later admitted. "You can see the slow motion, my skull moves and my skin catches up."
In 2021, the news broke that the former Universal Champion had been released by WWE. It took everyone by surprise, particularly as the company firing top names - outside of some sort of earth-shattering scandal - wasn't common.
We heard it came down to money at a time when Vince McMahon was eager to cut costs, but how did Strowman feel to learn his time in WWE was up?
"It f*cking sucked. I mean, at the end of the day how else do I say it, it sucked," he says. "I had no intentions of going anywhere. But that’s an unfortunate part of the business, you know, business is business. And at the time that was the decision, I guess that they needed to make. And clearly, it wasn’t the right one because I’m back."
Following a pretty weird stint on the independents in the Control Your Narrative stable, Strowman returned to WWE in 2022 and says he was always confident it would happen.
"I knew, I knew for a fact. And that’s what I said, I got reached out by everybody, come here, come wrestle for us. And I’ve said it time and time again, I’m loyal to this company. Because of what this company has done for me, my family, my loved ones, I’m just loyal. And I knew for a fact that I would be back because this is where I belong. I truly believe I was put on this earth to be a WWE Superstar."
You can watch the full interview with Strowman in the player below.