Former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi has an unfavourable opinion of former WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar, which he recently reiterated.
HIROSHI TANAHASHI SPOKE ABOUT LESNAR’S TITLE MATCH NON-APPEARANCE AT THE LAST MOMENT
Tanahashi revealed on his “Ace’s High” podcast that he was supposed to face Lesnar for a match when the latter was reigning as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion in 2006. However, Lesnar had visa issues and the match, which had immense hype, had to be cancelled at the last moment.
When he heard that Lesnar would not be present for the match, “The Ace” was stunned. He did not know the intricacies of Lesnar’s contracts with NJPW and the issues surrounding it, but he knew it revolved around a considerable amount of money. It was, according to him, an unprecedented set of disappointing circumstances surrounding the prestigious Championship.
“Back in those days, we would have this big lion mark flag at the venues for fans to write messages of support on. Going into this match, we ran out of space on the first flag and had to get a second. That was how hyped the match was with the fans in the venues. But all of a sudden it was gone,” Tanahashi said, while mentioning that his world turned dark as soon as he heard from Riki Choshu the news of Lesnar not appearing for the title bout.
HE CRITICIZED LESNAR’S ‘SELFISH’ WRESTLING STYLE
He kept on criticizing Lesnar for his professional wrestling style, which solely included pounding people without selling much for his opponents, a trend seen in his WWE matches to this day, which was to him a selfish way to wrestle. Also disappointing to him was the fact that Lesnar agreed to wrestle anywhere as long as he got paid.
“To be brutally honest, I could never get into any of what I saw of Lesnar. It was all one sided, a completely selfish way of wrestling. I saw him come up in the early 2000s, and he was just pounding people, you never got to see anything from his opponents. I just didn’t understand his deal at all… To be honest, Lesnar didn’t really care about where he was wrestling as long as he got his payoff,” Tanahashi said.
