Matt Hardy On WWE Backstage Reaction To Lesnar's Botched Shooting Star Press At WM19

Brock Lesnar's botched shooting star press at WWE WrestleMania XIX was so scary that Kurt Angle thought Lesnar "was dead" after "The Beast" — who landed flat on his head — was unresponsive to his calls after the spot. While Angle somehow managed to coordinate the rest of the match with a concussed Lesnar, he was admittedly terrified until the final bell. As the story goes, an ambulance was waiting to rush Lesnar to the hospital, but he refused to get on it until Angle convinced him to. 

On a recent episode of "The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy," Matt Hardy described the frantic scenes backstage at Safeco Field after Lesnar returned to the locker room. "It was very, very scary," Hardy began. "At one point, after we knew he was OK, Ron Simmons — who I love — was like, 'I don't know man. He was listening to Shelton [Benjamin] too much. At OVW, they had this big monster flipping out, and he went there and flipped up ... and flipped out.'"

Hardy revealed Simmons gave him the same "don't let him flip out" advice every time he wrestled Lesnar subsequently. "I applaud Brock for attempting that, to create a WrestleMania moment — I understand why he did it. But the fact that that happened, and he just decided, 'I'm not gonna do that anymore and I can just work smarter and' ... I almost feel like that [incident] changed the way he worked."   

In a 2022 interview, Lesnar conceded it was "foolish" on his part to attempt the shooting star press, admitting that he wanted to create a "WrestleMania moment" for which he practiced the previous night. He even noted that Curt Hennig, his late mentor, advised him against doing the spot during his matches in OVW.