ESPN rolls out new streaming partnership with WWE, touts return of Brock Lesnar

If you want to know how ESPN is going to approach its new relationship with WWE journalistically, you got your first indication on Wednesday.

The Mothership had Paul Levesque, known to us as Triple-H, on its awful morning show “Get Up” on Wednesday to announce the new partnership between the entities.

The talk, not surprisingly, eventually turned to the return of Brock Lesnar, the former WWE and UFC champ who is featuring prominently in the ongoing sex-trafficking lawsuit against WWE and its former chairman, Vince McMahon.

The ”Get Up” schmucks let Levesque talk up the return of Lesnar as being akin to the return of McArthur or Jesus of Nazareth.

“We’re thrilled to have The Beast back,” Levesque gushed. “You know, we hit him up and said, Time to come home. And he was into it, and here we are. A massive, massive moment for our WWE fans, something that they thought they wouldn’t get to see.”

As to why WWE fans “thought they wouldn’t get to see” Lesnar in a WWE ring again, we got … crickets from the “Get Up” dolts.

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ICYMI

• Brock Lesnar, still named in Janel Grant sex-trafficking suit, is back in WWE

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ESPN, obviously, living here by the old adage, “Don’t sh*t where you eat.”

The deal announced Wednesday has ESPN paying WWE $1.6 billion over five years, beginning with “WrestleMania 42” in 2026, with ESPN getting the rights to broadcast 10 what-they-now-call “premium live events” yearly on the streaming service that ESPN will be debuting later this month.

WWE has been broadcasting its PLEs on Peacock since 2020, but it undoubtedly makes infinitely more sense for WWE to partner with ESPN, even aside from simply getting more money from ESPN.

“From my point of view, nobody does large-scale, massive events like ESPN. Super Bowl, all of it, right? It’s what you do. And it’s what we like to think we do better than anybody else on the planet,” Levesque said. “So, this is the perfect marriage. When we get together, things like ‘WrestleMania,’ ‘SummerSlam,’ ‘Royal Rumble,’ are going to be bigger than ever. They’re going to be more of a spectacle than ever before. And we’re going to light the world on fire.”

While also gaslighting us on the uncomfortable parts of the business, like, for example, the return of the guy in the sex-trafficking suit to a position of main-event prominence.