The Mystery of Brock Lesnar’s WM19 Shooting Star Press

Who is responsible for Brock Lesnar’s infamous Shooting Star Press in the WrestleMania 19 main event when Lesnar injured his neck? Well, it depends on who you ask.

Lesnar re-opened the mystery during his appearance on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s live WWE Network podcast on Monday. Asked who made the call for him to perform the move, Lesnar said he would prefer not to say, but he said he was talked into the move.

“I was talked into doing it. I wasn’t comfortable doing it. I’m not going to say who talked me into doing it. I had done it before and I was young and stupid at the time. Could I do it? Should I have done it? No. Was the person who was telling me to do it – said it would be a WrestleMania Moment. Boy, why not have a WrestleMania Moment. I sure did, I guess,” Lesnar told Stone Cold.

All signs point to former VP of Talent Relations John Laurinaitis making the call. However, Lesnar’s opponent in the WM19 main event, Kurt Angle, says it was his idea.

“That was my idea, I will take responsibility for Brock doing that,” Angle told WrestlingInc.com in a new interview. “At the time I had to leave [WWE], it really wasn’t in the plans for me to drop the title at WrestleMania. I had suffered a broken neck and was going to have surgery, so I wanted to do something that people would remember.

“I asked Brock to do the Shooting Star Press, which he had done many times in OVW. I just thought it would be a great way to end the show.”

According to the Wrestling Observer, Lesnar performed the move during his OVW run in 2002 and was told by management to save it for a big moment on main TV.

By the time WM19 came around in 2003, Lesnar was heavier, making the move more difficult for a man of Lesnar’s size. And, it’s worth considering that Lesnar was still a rookie and wrestling his first WrestleMania match.

“Unfortunately Brock came up short. I think I was a little too far away, and Brock kinda double guessed before he went. If you ever watched the tape, you’ll see he goes, then he kinda stops, then he says screw it. So that hesitation caused him to land on his head,” Angle added to WrestlingInc’s Raj Giri.

“But that was my call, I know that Brock didn’t necessarily want to do it, but we did practice it earlier in the week and he was doing it perfectly well, he just got in a situation in the match where he kinda slipped a little bit and that was it.”

The conclusion is there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen contributing to Lesnar’s move, thinking he would be able to pull off the same move he attempted on a smaller scale in OVW.

Fortunately for Lesnar, his first WrestleMania match was not his last one after avoiding a serious neck injury. Coincidentally, the distinction of the final wrestling match at WM19 goes to Steve Austin, who has not wrestled since facing The Rock in the semi-main event of the PPV.