Mace recently looked back at his stint as a color commentary in WWE and a match he tried to get with Brock Lesnar. Mace worked as Dio Maddin during his commentary run and had a run-in with Lesnar that saw him written out of the role after he got F5-ed through the booth. He spoke with Steve Fall for WrestlingNews.co and you can see some highlights below (courtesy of Wrestling Inc:
On his time in WWE before his commentary run:“I was with WWE for a few years … before I even did commentary… I said, ‘Hey Booker, can you train me so I don’t look like a goof during this tryout?’ Trained me so I didn’t look like a goof. I looked enough not like a goof to get signed and waited in developmental.”
On his commentary run: “I got moved to commentary when Paul Heyman was taking over as the lead showrunner of Raw. There was a distinct effort to change everything … but they wanted and all-new commentary team, with me and Vic Joseph.”
On pitching the match with Lesnar: “In that…maybe three-week period of not knowing [if there would be follow-up], I’m back in the ring and I’m training, cause I’m like ‘Oh surely [we’ll have a match].’ Because the segment did so well on everything. I looked at the numbers on Twitter, or X, and on YouTube. The numbers were tremendous, and the response…I’d never gotten a response like that for anything.
“And I’m like ‘Man, even if I just get in the ring with Brock, and he kills me in 2 minutes, that could make my career, cause that’s a cool story of the commentator that put on some boots and went toe to toe with Brock Lesnar, even if it’s for a minute.’ But as I understand it, Vince thought it would confuse the fans, cause they didn’t know I was a wrestler. And then I had to go and become…I had to sneak back on to Raw as a [member of] Retribution.”
