10 Most Unexpected WWE Burials

Emerging from a match with credibility is not the same as emerging from a match with victory.

AJ Styles' bout with Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series last week was a case in point. Though the 'Phenomenal One' technically lost, he returned to SmackDown 48 hours later a veritable hero, having taken Brock the distance (or, at least, what qualifies as "the distance" in Brock's world).

Context is all-important, though. AJ could afford to take a loss against Lesnar because, one, he is already a bona fide main event star who helped build the SmackDown house and, two, the 'Beast Incarnate' is clearly the most protected star on the WWE roster.

If AJ of one year ago had lost a match to, say, Kane, you'd probably be asking questions - and that's why the decision to have the 'Big Red Machine' beat (and not just beat, but destroy) Finn Bálor on Raw a couple of weeks ago had so many fans taking to the message boards to complain.

If it makes Finn feel any better, this clearly isn't the first time one of Vince McMahon's employees has been left wondering what they did to upset him.

There were murmurs that Baron Corbin had upset some of backstage elders for his part in some highly-publicised Twitter spats over the summer, but it didn't seem like anything that couldn't be fixed with a good clear-the-air chat.

After all, for all his limitations, Corbin is - or was - clearly well-regarded in the corridors of WWE power. How else do you explain the fact that he won the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, scored a clean IC Title victory over Dean Ambrose and became Mr Money in the Bank, all in just over 12 months?

With the Jinder project going well (or, at least, well enough for them to keep the belt on him until tickets for their Indian tour went on sale), it was sort of understandable that the company went cold on a summer title change.

But Corbin's cash-in failure wasn't just a defeat. It was total humiliation, the like of which only one other wrestler in WWE history - namely Damien Sandow - has ever experienced (and we all know how that ended up).