Former UFC head of PR Jennifer Wenk spoke with MMAjunkie.com about Brock Lesnar’s decision to stay with WWE instead of going to the UFC, the twelve hours before he announced his decision and more. Check out the highlights:
On being notified that the decision had been made: “So it’s about ten o’ clock at night and I’m just about to get into bed and my phone rings, and I look at it and it’s a name I recognize and I answer the phone. And it’s Brock’s manager, and he said ‘Have you been following what’s going on in the news?’” And I said, “Eh, yeah I think so.’ He said ‘Well…Brock made a decision…and we want to announce it tomorrow.’ Keep it mind, it’s one o’ clock Eastern time…he’s like ‘So, Brock wants you to do it.’”
On planning out the announcement: “So we went through a few different scenarios right there and then on the phone. We talked about doing a press conference, we talked about doing a conference call, and a few different other ideas, but the biggest thing was that we didn’t want the news to leak. Which is why he called me to do it, because he knows I know the UFC very well and I knew the WWE very well. He wanted someone independent to make it so that he could announce it himself and break the news himself.”
On the day leading up to the announcement: “We got everything sorted out and Brock…I want to say it was around eleven o’ clock AM Pacific time, Brock calls me on the phone. And he’s like, ‘Dana White’s in the studio.’ I said, ‘What?’ He’s like ‘Dana White’s in the studio…what’s he doing there?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know…you tell me what he’s doing there!’ And he’s like ‘I don’t know.’ And I’m thinking ‘Well, oh my God…he’s going to go back to the UFC because Dana’s there obviously doing his part. So I get a call while I’m on the phone and it’s Brock’s manager and he’s like ‘Paul Heyman’s at the SportsCenter studios with Dana…I’m like ‘What’s Paul Heyman doing there?’ And I went back to Brock and said ‘You know Paul Heyman’s there right?’ ‘Yeah, I know, he’s the one who told me.’ And I went back to Brian [Stegeman, Brocks manager] and said ‘Dana and Paul Heyman are there together…what’s going on?’ And he’s like ‘Did you book it?’ ‘No…do you think someone at SportsCenter told somebody?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know!’ And so from eleven o’ clock until three o’ clock when he got there I was Googling and I was like, every thirty seconds waiting for it to leak.”
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