10 Rare Brock Lesnar WWE Dark Matches You Need To See

Before being deemed ready for WWE television, prospective wrestling talents are first given the task of performing in front of the arena crowd before the televised show starts airing. These are called 'dark matches' and give officials an opportunity to assess a talent in a television environment. Sure, the feed isn't live but the cameras are set up and officials look at things like wrestlers playing to the hard cam and hitting time cues and so forth. Letting a developmental talent work a series of house shows (or 'live events' as they're now known) does give an indicator of that wrestler's ability but TV is the real test. The WWF signed Brock Lesnar to a contract in 2000. The former NCAA Division One Heavyweight Champion was paid £250,000 per year just to train with the federation and he started working dark matches in 2001. Although raw (no pun intended), Lesnar shows undoubted promise and it's a fascinating to see how different he wrestled before making it to the main roster and being given 'the push'. Lesnar matches may be rare in 2015, given his limited-dates contract, but these dark matches from the early 2000s are, in many ways, even more fascinating.