Curtis Axel Talks Training The Rock and Brock Lesnar for Marquee Matches

It was no secret that The Rock prepared for his return matches with Joe Hennig, now known as Curtis Axel in WWE. Prior to his match with CM Punk at the 2013 “Royal Rumble” pay-per-view, The Rock tweeted the following:

httpss://twitter.com/TheRock/status/294682868725202944

WWE.com has recently published a piece on how Axel has trained not only The Rock, but also Brock Lesnar for some of the biggest matches in WWE history.

Axel talked about how training with The Rock first came about:

“I think that I gained some trust within the WWE organization, and they picked me because they had faith in me being safe, not injuring him and really making him step up his game to get his wind ready, and his body back in shape for all the strenuous activity he was about to endure at WrestleMania. So I think they just had trust in me, and I think that’s what it boiled down to. Plus, we both come from a pedigree. Me and Rock have always had that bond, just because of the generational thing. So I think that had something to do with it. He trusted me, and WWE trusted me, so that’s how all that came about.”

The former Intercontinental Champion also discussed what he learned from “The Great One:”

“Just how to gauge crowd reactions, after you do something just to live in that moment and have the people eat it up. It’s just timing, stuff that a lot of people watching at home don’t realize. The facial expressions, when to take your time with things. Don’t rush things. Just little, tiny things that you don’t think about when you’re starting out. I’m still improving in that aspect, so I watched The Rock and I listened to The Rock when I was there. Just those little details, the timing and getting the crowd’s reaction and stuff like that. It really helped.”

When asked if he still keeps in touch with The Rock, Axel revealed the he received a motivational from “Rocky” upon his re-debut in WWE as the Curtis Axel character:

“Yeah, when I became [a Paul Heyman Guy], he heard it through the pipeline that I was going to re-debut and he sent me an awesome text saying good luck. It was a really motivational text, helped me out and got me focused, because I was a nervous wreck that day. It really helped me out a lot hearing that from him. And from time to time, like, I saw him at WrestleMania 30, we had a good talk, and he’s a motivating guy, and just to hear him say, ‘Hey, man, you’re doing good,’ really means a lot to me.”

In the piece, it was also revealed that Axel helped prepare Brock Lesnar for his return in 2012. Axel discussed training with Lesnar, who was certainly a unique sparring partner:

“Nonstop. I mean, we would wrestle a half-hour without a break, just going back and forth and basically doing a whole match. There was a moment, and he might get mad at me for saying this, but there was a moment where we stopped for a second and he said to me, “I’m going to beat your ass all the way to the corner, and then I’m going to take a step back. And when I come back to you, I want you to beat my ass all the way back to the other corner. And if it’s not up to my standards, if it’s not sufficient enough and I don’t think you’re aggressive, you know what’s going to happen to you.”

And in my head I’m thinking, ‘What does this mean?!?’ so, it happened. I beat his ass all the way to the corner as aggressive as I could, I got up waiting for him to do something and he said, ‘That’s good.’ And we moved on.”

Check out the piece in its entirety, here.

Editor’s Note

This is a very good piece from the company’s website. It’s a shame how Axel had such an impactful re-debut, only to be overshadowed right out of the gate. At his age, he probably won’t get another chance to make a big run in WWE, which is unfortunate.