After the bell rung for his WrestleMania 42 match, Brock Lesnar surprised the wrestling industry by taking his gloves off and unlacing his boots in the middle of the ring, signifying his retirement. The moment was so shocking that few fans believe it, and according to Dave Meltzer in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, fans might be better of taking the moment with a grain of salt.

Meltzer had previously reported the internal belief that Lesnar isn’t actually retired. In the Observer report, Meltzer further claimed that the Observer was “outright told to treat it as an angle” from sources that included the person who warned them last year’s Seth Rollins injury was an angle. The report reiterated the backstage belief that Lesnar will retire at SummerSlam 2026, which takes place in Minneapolis, the city Lesnar is billed from. Lesnar himself had previously said that he was only back in WWE “for a short time.”

Meltzer’s report went on to point out that while Lesnar’s performance was convincing, as was Paul Heyman’s on the subsequent episode of “WWE Raw,” that doesn’t mean Lesnar is actually retired. Meltzer claimed Lesnar’s performance was “no more convincing or emotional that Mark Henry was for his fake retirement angle, nor even in the league of the performance by Terry Funk in his 1983 first retirement angle.”