NFL Insider Tom Pelissero’s GREAT Story about Brock Lesnar’s Vikings Tryout

Jake Paul says his next goal is the NFL, maybe a walk-on at Stanford at age 29 to play slot receiver. That premise sent Tom Pelissero down a memory hole he had somehow never shared on the show, even with TJ, the host of No Contest Wrestling on the Rich podcast network: Pelissero was a 23-year-old reporter covering the Vikings in 2004 when Brock Lesnar tried out for the team.

Lesnar was an All-American wrestler at the University of Minnesota and a WWE star at the time, years before he became UFC heavyweight champion. He decided he wanted to play in the NFL, and head coach Mike Tice, never one to pass on something entertaining, signed him that June. The first look anyone got of Lesnar the football player came when he rolled up to the dorms at Minnesota State Mankato for training camp with Sable, dressed exactly as you would picture from the ring. Pelissero remembers Lesnar in a sleeveless shirt, every muscle out. It was a scene.

Then came the practice field, where Lesnar wore number 69 and lined up at the blocking sled next to Kevin Williams, the previous year's first-round pick and a perennial All-Pro. Listed at 6-foot-2 but probably shorter, Lesnar looked small next to a defensive line full of 6-5 and 6-6 bodies. Wide, with massive traps and arms, but short.

This was not a gag, Pelissero stressed. Lesnar worked. He went through camp, did everything asked, and even got into a preseason game, making a play in the backfield in his final appearance. Wrestlers, Pelissero noted, often translate to the offensive or defensive line, and Lesnar was treating it like a real shot at the roster.

But he never stopped carrying himself like the baddest dude on the planet, and that set up the moment Pelissero will never forget. The Vikings held a joint practice with the Chiefs in Mankato, the kind of session where emotions run hot and something always seems destined to pop off. When Trent Green got hit down around the knee, a football brawl broke out, the everyone-comes-together variety. Out of nowhere, Lesnar grabbed a player and suplexed him to the ground.

"Suplex City, baby," TJ offered, and Pelissero ran with it. Lesnar came out of the pile with his helmet off, strutting and showing off while the crowd went bananas. The players, many of them wrestling fans, could not have been happier to have him there, patting him on the shoulder pads.

Lesnar did not make the team and, Pelissero figures, did not really want the practice squad. He took his best shot and walked away. The reporter says he still has a grainy 2004 video of the suplex buried somewhere, a vivid souvenir from one of the wildest things he ever saw on an NFL field. A fitting entry, as the panel noted, for a Vikings history full of strange moments and still zero championships.