With the coronavirus currently throwing WWE for a loop as it relates to television production for the foreseeable future, long-time WWE fans will remember another instance where an outside event caused a change to the schedule. While nothing has ever rivaled what is currently going on with the pandemic in the United States (and around the world), there was a blizzard during the winter of 2015 that caused a change to the schedule. On January 26th, 2015, RAW had to be cancelled due to the storm. This caused WWE to mostly air pre-recorded footage, including the entire Royal Rumble from that year (something WWE did on RAW just last week). However, there was some new footage shot that night, as Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns (who would headline WrestleMania that year) did a shoot at the Stamford, CT WWE headquarters.
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Following RAW that night, a handful of stars went to a nearby bar, and that story has become somewhat of a legend in the industry ever since. Booker T recently spoke about it on his podcast and recounted how Brock Lesnar was able to keep the bar that night open long past closing time. The outing included Lesnar, JBL, and Booker T.
“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.”
Eventually, some other WWE stars made their way to the bar, including Corey Graves. Graves recently spoke about the incident on his podcast, noting that Lesnar paid a significant amount of money to the bartender to keep the bar open that night.
[H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcript]
