Lex Luger Has Regrets About How He Left WWE For WCW, Says Vince McMahon Was ‘Gracious’ After

Lex Luger says he has regrets about how he infamously left WWE for WCW at the start of the Monday Night Wars in 1995. Luger showed up on the first-ever episode of WCW Nitro on September 4th, 1995, just one day after he had competed for WWE. Luger had been under a handshake deal with WWE at the time and didn’t tell anyone in WWE he was leaving, resulting in the first shocking moment of the WCW vs. WWE war.

Luger spoke about the moment on the latest episode of AdFreeShow’s Lex Expressed podcast, noting that he has regrets over how it happened. You can see highlights below (per Fightful):

On regretting how he left WWE for WCW: “Vince McMahon always treated me very well. We had a great personal relationship. We both sincerely wanted to work it out, but I think his concerns were legit. As the owner of the company, ‘So, if I let you sign an agreement with an addendum on it that you can do outside stuff, even though it’s fitness nutrition, what if WWE wants to bring out their own supplement line or fitness stuff? What if other guys want to do outside stuff other than fitness and nutrition? What if they want to do this or that?’ I understood that he would have been opening a Pandora’s box as the owner and CEO of WWE. So I understood. There were no hard feelings… So yeah, if there was a regret, it was definitely at the time. I had very mixed emotions on that. I went home and told my wife, ‘They want me to come in. I think it’s a long-term, not short-term, money-wise, but it could be a great opportunity for me to go back to WCW, but they want me to leave, not give any notice.’ Yeah, it was hard for me back then to get my arms around doing that.”

On his encounter with McMahon some time later: “I bumped him into an airport about a year and a half later, and the wars were up full board. Vince was gracious, smiled, and came up and shook my hand. Outwardly, at least, he didn’t seem like he had any hard feelings about it. It hurt me doing it, so my guess was, and only he can answer that, that it definitely was hurtful. So yeah, that was a definite regret. As good as things were going, it hurt a little bit, for sure.”