10 Very Rare Brock Lesnar Matches You Have To See

3. APA (Nov 26, 2001)

Long before Lesnar was challenging for WWE Championships, though, he was being put through his paces on a series of dark segments before Raws and SmackDowns each week.

There are a whole host of these matches available on YouTube; meetings with Spike Dudley, Crash Holly, Albert, and Funaki. But one that stood out to me more than most was a tag team match pitting Lesnar and Ron Waterman against Faarooq and Bradshaw of the APA.

Bradshaw in particular has gained some notoriety for being a bit of a backstage bully. Stories endure of his hazing of the likes of the Miz, Bully Ray, and the Blue Meanie, among others, so it was interesting to see how he’d treat a couple of rookies like Lesnar and Waterman.

And other than a hard big boot to the jaw, you’d have to say Lesnar got off fairly scot-free; Bradshaw must have been a fan. In the end it was Waterman — who’d later return to the world of MMA — that Bradshaw scored the pinfall off after a bigtime Clothesline from Hell.

Following the match, Lesnar and Waterman were roundly booed out by the South Carolina crowd, so they must have been doing something right; Lesnar maybe more so than Waterman.