When Brock Lesnar left WWE for the first time, he headed over to Japan and wrestled Shinsuke Nakamura for New Japan Pro Wrestling. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when The Beast ended up suing the company over the rights to use his likeness from matches and he was ultimately removed from their archives and soon decided to try his luck in the octagon by joining UFC.
In an excerpt from his new book King of Strong Style: 1980 - 2014, Nakamura details his match with Lesnar and made it clear that it was a major disappointment to him due to his opponent's attitude.
"[That] match was seriously rough. First, Lesnar was saying all this stuff about how he respected New Japan, but it felt to me like that was just for show, that he didn’t really respect the promotion. Like, somewhere, he was looking down on Japanese people. I lost the match, and that was the first time I cried at pro wrestling after a match.
"It was the main event at Tokyo Dome. This was a pretty hallowed stage, and I knew I hadn’t fought the way I imagined I would. And there was, like, this temperature difference between me and Lesnar. I didn’t get the sense he had any love for pro wrestling. It felt like he was just doing his job."
In recent years, it's become clear that wrestling is just a job to Lesnar and that he doesn't have any real love for the business beyond the money he makes from it. Nakamura, meanwhile, went on to make it clear that he was unhappy seeing Lesnar leave the company with the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and while he respects what he accomplished in UFC, he doesn't appear to be a fan!
"I felt like this was too much; he was seriously scoffing at us. Lesnar won the championship and took the belt home, I told Simon [Inoki] if the company didn’t get it’s shit in order, that belt was definitely going to get nicked. I didn’t honestly believe that when we fought. But it ended up just like I feared. He has the physical stuff, plus a straightforward strength and a certain amount of flexibility, so there was a bit of the monster to him. But I didn’t like his personality, you know? He might have made a real mark in UFC, but he didn’t even seem to notice the audience booing. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s a heel to the core.'"
With Lesnar on his way out of WWE, these two will obviously never get the chance to go one on one again but it doesn't sound like the King of Strong Style would want to even if that was a possibility!