Booker T Recalls Amusing Brock Lesnar Bar Story
On January 26th, 2015, Monday Night Raw was scheduled to be the fallout show from the Royal Rumble, which saw Roman Reigns win the Royal Rumble match and then-WWE World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar defeat Seth Rollins and John Cena in a triple threat match to set up the main event of WrestleMania 31.
That night, the show was supposed to air live from Hartford, Connecticut, but due to a snow storm, WWE was forced to cancel the live event in the arena and instead aired a replay of the Royal Rumble match as well as a special face-to-face interview in studio between Reigns and Lesnar.
Due to the show being cancelled, only a select few wrestlers were live at the WWE studios in Stanford. Booker T discussed that night on his Hall of Fame podcast and how he spent the night with Lesnar, JBL and Reigns in a bar. Booker T noted that when the bar was ready to close at 2 a.m., Lesnar had other ideas.
"We were in a bar that night and it was coming up on 2 o'clock in the morning telling stories and talking and the lady at the bar was ready to go," Booker T said "She was shutting it down and said last call. We asked if she would stay open for another hour and she said 'No, we're shutting it down right now. Okay guys, if you want to get another drink you better get it right now.' We were getting ready to wrap it up and Brock Lesnar walked down and we told Brock she's wrapping us up.
"We gotta get out of here and Brock said 'Hold on, let me go talk to her.' Brock goes to talk to her and literally 2 minutes later, the bar is open for another hour, no problem. I don't know what it was, but that big viking went over, man. He told her something and the bar was open. We stayed there and we drank till we closed it down and everything was fine. I don't know what he told her, but definitely drinks were on the house."
Corey Graves had recently told that story on the After The Bell podcast. Graves noted that Lesnar agreed to pay "a significant amount of money" to keep the bar open.
"[Lesnar] paid a significant amount of money to keep the bar wide open for everybody to make sure they made the best of a crappy situation," Graves said. "I, of course, stayed in a completely different hotel, but it led to me finding the only open establishment in the scenic Stamford, CT where myself and two-thirds of The Shield made sure that none of the beers at said establishment went unattended."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Reality Of Wrestling with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.