The Man Behind The Monster: A Conversation With WWE's Braun Strowman

Braun Strowman is known as a monster in the ring, but he couldn’t be sweeter outside of it! It was awesome to have the opportunity to get to know him and hear his perspective as a part of WWE. He’s a really interesting man who eats more meat in a day than I could consume in a month. Check out our full conversation below!

On November 27th, you’re going to be at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland for the WWE Holiday Tour Supershow! Have you ever been to Maine before?

I have, I actually love Maine. There's a little spot, I can't remember exactly which town it's in. We'd always run the Portland area and stuff like that. There's a little restaurant, I'll give them a plug. The Red Barn. It is the best lobster roll I've ever had. It's one of my favorites. That's why said I love Maine. I really love it up there in the fall, the leaves change. Everything is so beautiful. It's such an unbelievable state and I'm really looking forward to getting back, I haven't been to Maine and I think three years, so get ready. The monsters coming!

How did you get into wrestling?

I used to compete in the world’s Strongest Man competition. 2011, I was North America's Strongest Man. 2012, I won the Arnold amateur World Championship and then 2012, I was an alternate for World strongest man in Los Angeles. That year, WWE was there recruiting. I became good friends with Mark Henry, who was another fellow strongman competitor, the inaugural Arnold Classic strongman winner. We had formed a good relationship outside of the wrestling industry. Mark put his name on the line, got me an opportunity to come down for a trial. WWE liked what they saw, they offered me a developmental contract. I was the inaugural class in the WWE Performance Center. I am the first WWE superstar to come into WWE with zero wrestling experience, be trained at the WWE Performance Center, and make it to the main roster. And now here we are, going on 10 years later. This coming July will be 10 years with the company, with a little break in there. But yeah, it's just been kinda like trying to lasso a tornado and hold on for dear life. It's been such an unbelievable ride. And I've said a couple of times in other interviews my time away from the company was was a very interesting time as well and allowed me to take a step back and realize holy cow, all this stuff that I'd done in six years of being on TV. I had won every title except one that WWE had to offer and wrestled every superstar, sold out every building we'd been to in the world. And it was nice to take a step back. But now the monster is home where he belongs. Ramping things up leaving for this holiday tour. I couldn't be more excited. I mean, how much more fitting are these red skinny jeans that I'm wearing? Gonna be coming in looking like Kris Kringle on holiday tour.

If you didn't go down this wrestling path, what do you think you would be doing for a career?

I don't know. Maybe still picking up cars and giant rocks and pulling airplanes. I'm also probably still mechanical. I'm still very active in the automotive industry. I love race cars, I got a couple race cars. And you know, honestly, I don't know. I'm one of those people that I don't really have per se an end goal. I enjoy the walk of life and anything that comes across my path is about experiences. Why not experience as many things as you possibly can? And that's one of the amazing things with being a WWE superstar is being able to travel around the world and see so many amazing things, meet so many amazing people, and do so many amazing things. And we're just getting started, I signed a nice lengthy contract again with WWE, so you're gonna have to see this ugly mug on your TV for the foreseeable future. So get ready to take the ride with me.

What's a normal day in your life look like?

Sometimes I try to sleep in, it doesn't usually happen too much. I have a very young rambunctious American XL bully. She's 18 months old and she's 105 pounds and she doesn't let dad sleep in too much. So she wakes up, Dad, let's go play, I need to run, I got energy. She keeps me very busy. It works out great. First thing I do every morning, I wake up and I do around an hour of fasted cardio. I've learned with how my body type is that I burn a lot more calories when I trick my body in the morning to thinking that I've eaten. I wake up and I'll drink like 20 ounces of water and that tricks my body into thinking that I have food in my stomach. It starts my metabolism, but there's no calories to actually digest, so I'm burning calories on my body. I get out and go for a nice brisk walk with Bella in the morning. Then I get back in and I'll have a nice slow digesting carbohydrate, like oats or something like that. I've been really big on buckwheat lately. I went to the store the other day and I just was rummaging through the the dried cereal aisle and I came across buckwheat. I just remembered buckwheat pancakes when I was a kid and I really liked it. So I tried and actually wow, I was really impressed, so that's something that I've added in. I'll do usually a protein powder for my first meal. So I'll do 50 grams of like a whey protein and around 150 grams of that buckwheat or oats or something like that. And then I'll sit around for a little bit go through mail what I need to do, and then I head to the gym. That's where I start packing more bricks on this meat castle that I am getting there to get a training session in. I try to get in the gym every day. And it all depends on how my body's feeling, whether I'm sore from wrestling, sore from training or whatnot. It's really important that I've learned as I'm getting older there, that I have to listen to my body. So I get in there, get my training done, usually around an hour to an hour and a half of training, then right away again, another meal. So usually I eat around seven to eight meals a day. And usually I consume about six to seven pounds of meat a day, between cook beef, chicken or fish, and around four pounds of rice along with that. I time those meals out about every two and a half hours. So I'm pretty much just a cow and I just graze all day long. People laugh because I carry a fanny pack and stuff like that and that's where I keep snacks because I have a very high metabolism running around right now at around 335, 340 pounds sitting around 10% body fat. And it's something that's been fun and people have seen over my career with WWE. When I came in, I was legit 400 pounds. The heaviest I ever was competing in strongman was 418 pounds. So transitioning from strongman into wrestling, where to strongman world you need to be able to, you know, maximize cardiovascular for 90 seconds. Now stepping into WWE, we're going out there and I'm having wrestling matches up to 45 minutes long. It's a totally different cardio that my body had to be re-acclimated to. So in my time away with WWE in the last year, that was something that I really focused on as Adam, the as the man behind Braun Strowman. Braun Strowman is back. I think that brought the best possible package that I can to the show, you know, to go out there and do what we do as a company and let's put smiles on people's faces. And some people just love big sweaty men.

Of all of your accomplishments, what are you the proudest of?

It's hard to really narrow it down to anything. I love what I do. I've said this time and time again, I truly believe I was put on this earth to be a WWE superstar. So any opportunity that the company gives me to go out there and represent, I take that as a blessing, you know, your opportunities don't always come. And when they do, it's so important to make the most out of them and that's what I tried to do good, bad or ugly, whatever I'm given that day, as a script to go out there and perform, I try to make the best of it as I possibly can because at the end of the day, our fans spend their hard earned money, they take their time to come out and watch what we do and perform. And it's an opportunity for us to take them on on a journey, you know, on this emotional journey, and get them to take their mind off of what's going on in their day to day life. And that's the cool thing about what WWE is and what our locker room is. You know, at the end of the day, I like to describe wrestling as ice cream. Everybody likes ice cream, I don't care. You're a liar. If you say no, I like ice cream. It's a matter of what flavor ice cream you like. And WWE does such a good job of having that diversity in the locker room. Every walk of life that you can imagine, whatever you believe in, whatever you want to see. We have it - tune in and check it out. If you've never been to one of our live shows, I promise you we will hook you, you will become a fan. If you're on the fence, take that step and I promise you. Let us do our job and turn you into one of the WWE Universe.

For anyone who’s never been to a live WWE event, what can they expect?

Excitement, energy, you know, there's something special about the WWE Universe, not only as a performer, but as a fan. I've been on both sides of the guard rail, sitting out there with the fans, that energy is so contagious, you get caught up. I like to use this term '“getting lost in the sauce.” At the end of the day, it is a family fun oriented environment and it's so awesome to go out and see the WWE Universe having fun, smiling, partaking, chanting, cheering, booing, all that. At the end of the day, it's a show and we do such an amazing job of going out there and entertaining. I'm so proud of our locker room. It is so unbelievably talented. From top to bottom. There's so many great men and women in our locker room that go out there and put their bodies on the line for the name of entertainment. And it's fun. That's why I said take the dive come and get lost in the sauce. Have fun, enjoy it with us!

This tour does have an amazing roster! Who are you most excited to be on the road with?

Everybody, it's just good to be home. Like I said, it's such a family hood, brotherhood, sisterhood in the locker room. The locker room right now is so amazing, we have every walk of life and it's so awesome to see the different styles that we have to offer. That's why I said we've got the little guys that could do all the crazy flips, we got the big monsters like me, and everything in between. It is such a top to bottom just well put together show, I always got to give the the nod to the powers that be that design the card plan everything out because they do such an amazing job. We run it to if we try to run a two hour and 45 minutes show when we do our premium live events, which this is going to be on our holiday tour. And the thing is with these shows is we're wrestling solely for the fans in the building. So we're more interactive with the fans of these shows, where if you say we're on Friday night Smackdown. At the end of the day, we're that's our TV show. A lot of this stuff is projected mainly for that camera to get to our big audience at home. So it's such more of an intimate setting because we have fun and interact with the fans. And I love it. That's what I said getting out there having fun with the fans, getting them to chant. That's what it's all about.

What has been your favorite fan interaction?

I've been very blessed to do Make-A-Wish and stuff like that. Those are some of the most important times of my life that I've ever been to, to see some of these kids and what they've gone through and how they lean on us as WWE superstars, how there were real life heroes with them. I see these stories and hearing these stories that parents have shared with me, where their kids are going to have surgery and stuff like that and they listen to my entrance music, they hold my finger while they're put under anesthesia. That's something so powerful that a lot of people don't realize comes along with this job. And with great power comes great responsibility. And that's the thing that they always say, that old saying of never meet your heroes, I hate that. I want everybody that meets me to go, man, Braun Strowman is everything that I thought he was going to be and more. It's so very special to us to be able to be able to interact with our fans and things like that the meet and greets all that stuff because at the end of the day without our fans, there is no Braun Strowman.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to become a WWE superstar?

First and foremost, do your school, go to school! I grew up in the trade industry as a mechanic and things like that. Wrestling is a very, very dangerous sport. Freak accidents happen and you never know when things can end. So it's always nice knowing that you have something to fall back on. It's about having fun. It's such a fun job and I tell people that work, find a school that you want to go to, that you want to train in, but the most important thing is make sure you're having fun because if you're not having fun, go to different school. This is supposed to be the most fun job on earth because at the end of the day, we're all a bunch of kids going out there and fighting each other in underwear. Let's be real, that's fun.

I have a fan question for you! Alex from Round Pond wants to know, who is tougher of the two that you've fought - Big Show or Omos?

Both are specimens of humanity. I mean, let's be real well, you're talking about me, 6’8” at 330 pounds. But these gentlemen made me look like a child. Some of my favorite matches I've ever had in my career were the ones that I had with Big Show. I learned so much with him when I came in being a young boy green and stuff, that is one of the terms that we use in the wrestling industry and that's being inexperienced. So being able to get in there with such a legend, a gentleman that's been in the industry and such a focal point of the industry for the last 30 years, just being able to step underneath that Learning Tree and let some of that knowledge fall down on me. And now that, you know, I'm kind of in his position, it's my turn to bestow some of that knowledge. I had the opportunity to to step in the ring with giant Omos in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia just a couple of weeks ago, at Crown Jewel and my goodness. I don't think anyone's ever really whooped my butt like that before. I've never been put into a hole, you know, that fast. And he's such a large human being. I kind of underestimated how big and how strong he was because let's be real, I'm the big strong guy. And there's that saying, there's always somebody bigger and badder out there. Well, he's clearly bigger, but I proved to the world that I'm badder.

Here in the state of Maine, our motto is “The way life should be.” According to you, what is the way life should be?

This is one of my mantras in life; do what makes you happy as long as you don't take someone else's happiness away.

Much love to Braun for giving me the chance to pick his brain. Don’t miss him in Portland on November 27th at the WWE Holiday Tour Supershow!