Kurt Angle on WWE wanting Brock Lesnar to form a tag team with a 7-time champion

Brock Lesnar's exploits as a singles star in WWE are beyond impressive. Most fans forget that the Beast Incarnate has also sporadically competed in various tag teams during his career. Kurt Angle recently opened up about Brock Lesnar's seemingly bizarre alliance with Tajiri.

Lesnar teamed up with the Japanese Buzzsaw in a tag team title tournament match against Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle on SmackDown in 2002. On paper, Lesnar and Tajiri seemed like an unlikely duo, but WWE apparently had a valid reason for pairing them up, as Kurt Angle explained on his podcast.

The Olympic hero revealed that Brock Lesnar was never expected to win the tag team championship, and all he needed was a partner who could take the loss:

"No, listen. You have to realize the reason they did this. If you're going to put Brock Lesnar in a tag team tournament and you don't want him to win, you're going to have someone in there who does the job for him. You have to protect Brock," stated Angle. [30:00 - 30:12]

Brock Lesnar would have ideally been the favorite to win the entire tourney had he allied with The Undertaker or any other main-event talent.

However, Kurt Angle said that WWE brought in Tajiri just to take the pinfall and protect Brock Lesnar from looking weak in a losing cause. He continued to talk about WWE's 'strategy,' as you can view below:

"Now, if Brock and Undertaker tagged together, okay, but that would have been such domination; they would have definitely won the tag team titles. So they had to strategically plan it out to protect people, and other people would do jobs for them, and so that's why they did what they did. Brock's not going to win the tag team title tournament, so we have to have someone to do the job on the team." [30:23 - 30:56]

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Kurt Angle clarifies that WWE veteran Tajiri was not a jobber

Tajiri might not have been a top Superstar in WWE, but he was certainly not an enhancement talent. The respected legend won seven titles in WWE and was considered an exceptionally gifted worker inside the ring.

Tajiri's win-loss record wasn't excellent as he often played the "comedy sidekick" role. However, he still had a very memorable run in the company between 2001 and 2008.

While Kurt Angle acknowledged Tajiri's remarkable career, he also understood why 'The Japanese Buzzsaw' was chosen to partner with Brock Lesnar:

"Not that Tajiri was a jobber. He wasn't by any means," Angle added. "He was a great wrestler and had a great career. But at least you knew you had someone in there to protect Brock so he wouldn't have to take the fall." [30:13 - 30:22]

Brock Lesnar recently made his TV return to resume his feud with Bobby Lashley, with the rematch set to happen at Crown Jewel.

Are you looking forward to Lesnar vs. Lashley II, especially after what happened on this week's RAW?

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If you use any of the above quotes, please credit The Kurt Angle Show and H/T Sportskeeda for the transcription.