Many great wrestlers have had their humble beginnings in smaller wrestling promotions before making it to the WWE. In some cases, many stars spent years in WWE’s developmental system before being called up by WWE. Brock Lesnar was one of those stars who spent some time in WWE’s developmental before announcing himself on the big stage. Immediately after his debut, WWE realized they had a star on their hands.

But even before the WWE brought Brock Lesnar as ‘The Next Big Thing’ on RAW, an AEW star spotted him after seeing him execute a death-defying maneuver.

Matt Hardy noticed Brock Lesnar when he saw him do the ‘Shooting Star Press’ in OVW

Brock Lesnar was already killing it on the college wrestling circuit winning every title he could get his hands on. He ended up with a record of 106–5 overall in his four years of college.

After college, he joined ‘Ohio Valley Wrestling’ where he also met his future manager Paul Heyman. And while he was with OVW, Lesnar was performing a move that was perplexing everyone in the developmental. We are talking about the athletic maneuver, the ‘Shooting Star Express’ which is easily performed by wrestlers who have a small body frame. But what shocked fans was seeing an almost 300-pounder Lesnar perform the move with such ease.

And that’s exactly what caught the attention of tag team legend Matt Hardy. On the recent episode of his podcast, ‘The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy’, he narrated how he was shocked on seeing clips of Lesnar jumping from the top of the rope.

He said, “He first came on my radar when I heard about this behemoth, you know in the OVW that was doing a shooting star press. You know a guy that was a monster, a crazy physical specimen doing the shooting star press. That when I first became aware of Brock and I remember seeing clips of it and I was like ‘holy s**t’. this is incredible that this guy is doing this.”

But the very move that got him noticed by Matt Hardy almost ended his career 20 years ago.

Brock Lesnar performed the ‘Shooting Star Press’ once in the WWE and he almost broke his neck

We need to go back to WrestleMania XIX when Brock Lesnar was just a 25-year-old lad with young blood flowing through his veins. He was part of the main event where he faced the then WWE Championship Kurt Angle.

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And obviously being ‘The Biggest Stage In Wrestling’, Lesnar wanted to use this opportunity to show his athletic skills to the world. So he went on to perform the ‘Shooting Star Press’ but botched it so badly that he concussed himself in the process.

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In spite of such trauma to the head, Lesnar still managed to F-5 Angle and pin him, thus becoming the new WWE Champion. Lesnar has never dared to execute the ‘Shooting Star Express’ ever again in the WWE.