Brock Lesnar recently announced his retirement after losing to Oba Femi in a Hell in a Cell match at SummerSlam in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Looking back at Brock's career that began in the year 2000 Brock has almost exclusively competed in a WWE or WWE developmental ring.
I say almost as he left the WWE in 2004 and in that 8 years before he returned in 2012 he did wrestle elsewhere. In 2004 he attempted a career in Pro Football, and when that didn't pan out he returned to what he knew, and that was pro wrestling.
Lured back to the squared circle Lesnar would debut for New Japan Pro Wrestling on October 8, 2005 in the Tokyo Dome winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in a triple threat match defeated Champion Kazuyuki Fajita and Masahiro Chono pinning Chono.
Lesnar would continue to compete for New Japan through the end of 2005 with successful title defenses against Manabu Nakanishi and Yuji Nagata. In 2006 he main evented the annual January 4th Tokyo Dome show defeating Shinsuke Nakamura and wrestling in 3 more matches for the promotion through May 2006.
Brock was slated to defend the title against Hiroshi Tanahashi in July 2006, however New Japan wanted to cut his money from $50,000 per match to $30,000. Lesnar would not agree to it so he was stripped of the title and Tanahashi would win a one day tournament On July 17, 2006 to become the champion.
Fast forward a year, Lesnar who was still in possession of the physical IWGP Heavyweight Championship would appear and defend the Championship on Antonio Inoki's debut IGF: Inoki Genome Federation show June 29, 2007. That night TNA World Champion: Kurt Angle would defeat Lesnar to win the title.
Oddly enough, New Japan Pro Wrestling would officially recognize Lesnar's title as the IWGP 3rd Belt Championship stating he was the title holder from October 8, 2005 until June 29, 2007. New Japan would then go one to recognize Kurt Angle as the champion.
Kurt would defend the title in TNA at Hard Justice 2007 against Samoa Joe. He then defeated Yuji Nagata at the 2008 January 4th New Japan Tokyo Dome show, WrestleKingdom II. Then in February 2008 he would lose the title in a unification match against Shinsuke Nakamura the then current IWGP Heavyweight Champion.
In his career Brock wrestled 12 matches in Japan, 3 in 2003 during a Smackdown house show tour, and again for the WWE in 2015 defeating Kofi Kingston at The Best in the East live WWE Network special. His other 8 matches in Japan are the only non-WWE Matches of his career.
Here are the matches:
October 8, 2005
Toukon Souzou New Chapter, Tokyo Dome
Brock Lesnar defeated IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Kazuyuki Fujita & Masahiro Chono to win the championship
December 10, 2005
Battle Final 2005 Osaka, Japan
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar pinned Manabu Nakanishi
December 11, 2005
Battle Final 2005 Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar pinned Yuji Nagata
January 4, 2006
Toukon Shidou, Tokyo Dome
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar pinned Shinsuke Nakamura
February 19, 2006
NJPW Circuit 2006 Acceleration Tokyo, Japan
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar & Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Akebono & Riki Choshu
March 19, 2006
NJPW Circuit 2006 Takeoff
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar pinned Akebono
May 3, 2006
New Japan Cup 2006 Special Fukuoka, Japan
IWGP Heavyweight Champion: Brock Lesnar pinned Giant Bernard
June 29, 2007
IFG Toukon Bom-Ba-Ye, Tokyo, Japan
Kurt Angle pinned IWGP Third Belt Champion: Brock Lesnar to win the title
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