"He called me out of the blue" - WWE legend on surprise match with Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar called Kurt Angle out of the blue to ask him to be in a match with him for the IWGP Championship.
Following his first stint with WWE, Lesnar wrestled for NJPW and won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in his debut match. Although he was eventually stripped of the title, Lesnar was still promoted as the "real" IWGP Heavyweight Champion by the rival Inoki Genome Federation (IGF).
In his recent Kurt Angle Show podcast on AdFreeShows, Angle opened up about the match between him and Lesnar in 2007 in IGF for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The WWE legend stated that Lesnar wanted Angle to win the title from him because he was leaving the Japanese promotion.
“He (Brock Lesnar) called me out of the blue. I guess he didn’t want to do a job for anybody over in Japan. He was IWGP Champion. It was the third belt that we wrestled for, the IWGP third belt. I heard Brock was stripped of that title, but he wasn’t stripped because I beat him for that title. Brock wanted me to come over to Japan to wrestle him so he could lose to me, and I would end up losing to somebody over in Japan. That was his idea," said Kurt Angle (H/T WrestlingNews)
Angle said he was willing to travel to Japan to face Lesnar as he and The Beast Incarnate were good friends.
Brock Lesnar's stint in Japan
Kurt Angle challenges Brock Lesnar for Antonio Inoki's version of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship (IWGP 3rd Belt Championship) in Tokyo,Japan back on June 29,2007.Kurt would defeat Lesnar for that Title and add it to his TNA World Heavyweight Championship https://t.co/BkZWfqDZ96
A year after his final WWE match in 2004, Brock Lesnar debuted in New Japan Pro-Wrestling in 2005, quickly becoming the IWGP Heavyweight Champion.
He did not defend the title for a long time, which forced NJPW to strip him of the title. But he later joined Inoki Genome Federation (IGF) and was recognized as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion in that promotion, which he went on to defend against Kurt Angle in the aforementioned match.
The title is referred to as the IWGP 3rd Belt Championship by NJPW after the Lesnar fiasco.
Kurt Angle,with his TNA World Heavyweight Championship and after defeating Brock Lesnar via submission for the IWGP Third Belt Championship in Tokyo,Japan back on June 29,2007 https://t.co/SKhjF6NmlW