Brock Lesnar Returns to Raw, Destroys Oba Femi in Revenge Attack

The boots are back on. Brock Lesnar made his stunning return to WWE Raw on Monday night in Greensboro, North Carolina — and he came back swinging.

Oba Femi was in the ring setting up for his weekly open challenge when Lesnar blindsided him from behind, unloading four thunderous F5s on The Ruler and leaving him flat on the canvas. The Beast had a message, and it didn’t need words: the WrestleMania 42 loss isn’t over, and neither is his career.

Moments after the attack, Paul Heyman met with Raw general manager Adam Pearce backstage — where Pearce had already been scrambling to track Lesnar down, having filed retirement paperwork on his behalf. Heyman didn’t come empty-handed. He produced a contract, already bearing Lesnar’s signature, for a rematch against Femi at WWE Clash in Italy — which Heyman called “the biggest rematch in history.” All Femi needs to do is sign.

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How Good Was the Retirement Sell?

Genuinely great. After Femi defeated Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 last month, The Beast removed his boots and gloves and left them in the ring — a time-honored symbolic gesture — before an emotional farewell moment that had the wrestling world convinced he was done. WWE leaned into it hard, moving Lesnar’s profile to the alumni section of their official website.

And then there was Paul Heyman, who appeared to go full method on the whole thing. Speaking to TMZ Sports a few weeks after WrestleMania, The Advocate insisted he had no idea the retirement was coming.

“If I knew he was gonna retire, would have I gone on record saying he’s gonna dominate the next 15 years?” Heyman said. He even defended his ringside tears: “I was crying. Am I that good of an actor that I can cry on cue?”

It was, by any measure, a masterclass in keeping kayfabe alive — the kind of long-game storytelling that makes pro wrestling genuinely compelling when it’s done right.

Triple H was asked in the days after WrestleMania whether that might have been Lesnar’s last match. His answer was careful but telling. “Well, it certainly seemed that way,” the WWE chief said. “Brock is not a walk-back-through-the-curtain-and-have-a-long-conversation guy. Brock walks back very angry, goes to his bus, and that’s the end of it. So there wasn’t a discussion afterward.”

So When Does Lesnar Actually Retire?

That’s the real question now. According to Fightful Select, WWE officials were caught off guard by the WrestleMania retirement tease — many inside the company had expected SummerSlam 2026 to be Lesnar’s true swan song. That reporting lines up with a separate account from WrestleVotes Radio, which said sources still believe Lesnar will hang it up for real at SummerSlam in Minneapolis on August 1st and 2nd at U.S. Bank Stadium.

The Minneapolis connection runs deep. Lesnar attended the University of Minnesota, where he was a two-time All-American wrestler, and has been billed from Minneapolis throughout his entire WWE career. And yet, in all that time, he’s only wrestled two televised matches in the state — the last one way back in January 2004. A retirement in front of a hometown crowd at a massive stadium would be the kind of send-off that writes itself.

For now, though, The Beast has unfinished business. Clash in Italy takes place in Turin at the end of May, and if Oba Femi — who was reportedly furious about getting blindsided — puts his name on that contract, fans are getting at least one more chapter of this rivalry first.

Femi didn’t look like a man who was going to let that attack go unanswered.