Former WWE star Nunzio has looked back on a memorable backstage angle involving Brock Lesnar that ended with some very real damage being done to the building.

The incident took place on an episode of WWE SmackDown in May 2003, during a period when Nunzio was part of the Full Blooded Italians alongside Chuck Palumbo and Johnny Stamboli.

At the time, Lesnar was WWE Champion and had found himself at odds with Big Show and A-Train. Nunzio became involved in the storyline and confronted Lesnar backstage before the situation escalated into an ambush.

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on the Insight Podcast, Nunzio explained that being part of the FBI opened the door for him to work angles that would have been unlikely had WWE kept him exclusively in the cruiserweight division.

“We were doing something with The Big Show and stuff, and at that time, I think they had the FBI (Full Blooded Italians) going after everybody because we were a little group. Coming back to what I’m saying. Good thing I was in that group because it made me do all these different scenarios that if I was in the cruiserweight division, I would never have been able to do,” said Nunzio. “We were doing some shows with him, I forgot exactly how it came about, but that promo came up, and I don’t know what it really led to. I was poking him, and they said, ‘Slap him in the back of the head.’ I’m not slapping the back of the head. I slapped him on his back. That’s what made the loud noise.”

Nunzio revealed that he was specifically instructed to slap Lesnar in the back of the head, but decided against doing so. Instead, he struck Lesnar hard across the back to create the sound WWE wanted for the segment.

“I didn’t slap him in the head, and I knew Brock, he was very good to me. But because the writer was telling me to do it. I said, ‘No, I’m not slapping him in the back of the head.’ So I went for the back and I hit him hard, and it made a huge noise, and he was okay with it. That’s when we locked him in.”

Chuck Palumbo Causes Some Very Real Damage

The segment became even more memorable when Palumbo arrived operating a forklift, which was being used as part of the plan to trap Lesnar.

According to Nunzio, Palumbo accidentally drove the machinery into a wall and caused genuine damage to the building. That meant what was supposed to be a scripted WWE angle suddenly came with an unexpected repair bill for Vince McMahon.

“Another story, if you watch it, when Chuck drove the high-low, he f*cking broke the wall. Vince had to pay for that because Chuck don’t know how to drive a high-low. So we were trying to lock him in, and he drove through the wall. He broke that wall, which Vince McMahon unfortunately had to pay for.”

More than two decades later, the segment remains an example of how quickly things could go off script during WWE's backstage angles, with Palumbo's forklift mishap turning part of the storyline into a very real accident.