Brock Lesnar has upset plenty of fans over the years after defeating their favorite wrestlers. In 2006, emotions also ran high in the locker room following a famous match involving The Beast Incarnate in Japan.
Lesnar defeated Shinsuke Nakamura to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in front of 43,000 fans at the Tokyo Dome. While the match was widely viewed as underwhelming, the same cannot be said for Nakamura's brutally honest thoughts about the first-time-ever meeting.
In his King of Strong-Style book, the Japanese star accused his opponent of not caring about New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW):
"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." (H/T Pro Wrestling Stories)
IWGP Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar hits the F-5(renamed as The Verdict due to legal issues with WWE at the time) on Shinsuke Nakamura during their bout at Tokyo Dome back on January 4,2006 pic.twitter.com/XhcgZCxUjN
— Rasslin' History 101 (@WrestlingIsKing) September 16, 2021
Nakamura admitted he was reduced to tears post-match when he realized how little his opponent respected the wrestling industry:
"I lost the match, and that was the first time I cried at pro wrestling after a match. It was the main event at the 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 Lesnar and me. I didn't get the sense he felt any love for pro wrestling. It felt like he was just doing his job."
Nakamura joined WWE in 2016, a decade on from his match against Lesnar. Their NJPW rivalry has never been revisited in WWE.
Shinsuke Nakamura is not the first person to question Brock Lesnar's passion
Jon Moxley, formerly known as Dean Ambrose in WWE, lost a No Holds Barred Street Fight against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32.
DEAN AMBROSE (JON MOXLEY) VS BROCK LESNAR from WrestleMania 32 should have been a chaotic war. They should’ve told the story of this rabid lunatic who takes everything from Brock and will not stay down nor quit. Would’ve been magic pic.twitter.com/3Shxdjcr05
— Keegan Dimitrijevic (@KeeganRW) August 10, 2020
In 2016, Moxley claimed on The Stone Cold Podcast that he was "met with laziness" when he pitched ideas to Lesnar about their blockbuster match:
"Artistically, Brock didn't wanna do anything, to be perfectly honest," Moxley said. "Brock's gonna Brock. He's all about Brock. I had a vision for that match to be the craziest thing imaginable. I was trying to pitch everything to everybody and had every idea. I put so much effort in and so much work in, and other people did too, and I was met with laziness."
Despite his alleged lack of passion, Brock Lesnar is undoubtedly one of the most successful wrestlers of the last two decades. He is a 10-time WWE world champion and has main-evented WrestleMania on five occasions.