Brock Lesnar Signing With AEW Is A Pipe Dream

Brock Lesnar was announced as a free agent this past week, and the deceivingly tame news has led to natural speculation on his future. And while UFC and AEW have emerged as potential landing spots outside of WWE, Brock Lesnar has long-since established a precedent of WWE or bust.

Lesnar as a free agent is more ceremonial than anything, as any talk of him showing up in UFC or AEW is best taken with a grain of salt. The 43-year-old former UFC heavyweight champion remains out of the USADA testing pool, as reported by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, making UFC a logistical impossibility as long as this is the case.

Despite AEW President Tony Khan playing coy about commenting on whether or not the company was pursuing Lesnar, top star Chris Jericho doesn’t seem to see it happening.

“Would we love to have Brock in AEW? Yeah, sure. I’d love to work with Brock, we’ve never had a match on TV ever and we have a lot of water under the bridge, shall we speak, that would probably add a lot of extra fire to it,” said Jericho during a recent Saturday Night Special.

“I think Brock will be in WWE for as long as he wants to be in the business,” the former AEW world champion concluded.

Jericho’s comments speak to Lesnar’s now-infamous pattern of using other combat sports promotions for leverage in order to get the best possible deal from the multi-billion-dollar industry leader in WWE.

In the past, more specifically when his WWE contract is expiring, Lesnar has shrewdly posted timely pictures alongside UFC President Dana White. He even went as far as to show up at UFC 226 to tease a bout with Daniel Cormier, all before re-signing with WWE time and again.

With Dana White likely learning his lesson on the principal of “fool me once,” AEW serves as a new bargaining chip for Brock Lesnar to exploit. Any speculation of Lesnar going to AEW is music to Brock’s ears, not because there is any legitimacy to it, but rather due to the fact that in increases his buying temperature for WWE and its superior financial standing.

This is Brock Lesnar up to his old tricks, and the trick typically ends in a lofty payday for one of the more shrewd athlete-negotiators in combat sports history. Lesnar, who was described as “out of everyone else’s price range” in the aforementioned Wrestling Observer Newsletter, is unlikely to sign with AEW even if the promotion seriously pursued him.

As an upstart wrestling company in only its second year, AEW simply does not have the financial resources to compete with WWE especially during a pandemic that led to the company enacting its first-ever wave of releases. Khan has been open about AEW’s challenges during the pandemic, recently admitting to losing “millions” of dollars during the pandemic.

“We’ve talked a lot about what it took to put the show on, but let’s be honest. Why we’re doing it? For AEW, our partnership with TNT, putting on great shows is our revenue stream right now cause we’re not doing the big events,” Khan said during an episode of AEW Unrestricted.

“This was going to be the best run of business we’ve ever had. And we’ve lost millions and millions and millions of dollars in live events and I don’t take it lightly, but I can’t take it out on the people that work here cause it’s not their fault.”

To spend the amount of money necessary for a second-year promotion to land Brock Lesnar during a pandemic would be borderline reckless. AEW’s recent television extension essentially saved it from a potentially grim future during the empty-arena era. But now just doesn’t seem like the time for AEW to land another big whale from WWE after Chris Jericho has filled the exact same role so fantastically.

Between Brock Lesnar’s strong relationship with Vince McMahon (at least from a business standpoint) and WWE’s ability to outspend AEW at even a competitive price, there is virtually no roadmap for Brock Lesnar to land in AEW.