10 Wrestlers You Totally Forgot Headlined WWE PPVs
Mike Knox: WWE main eventer.
Apart from actually winning a world championship, there are few greater signs of a company's faith in a wrestler than having him or her headline a Pay-Per-View show. Though the WWE Network has changed the way events are marketed and sold, prior to 2014, PPV was a major source of revenue for the promotion. Each show was expected to sell a certain number of buys, and those numbers were based largely on who was in the main event. Headlining a PPV meant that WWE was counting on a star to draw money in a very concrete way.
It's no surprise, then, to look down the list of WWE's all-time most prolific PPV main eventers and see who's listed. Men like John Cena, The Undertaker, The Rock, and Chris Jericho are among the stars who have racked up the honor the most times, and they're also among the company's greatest legends and draws.
Still, that's not to say that everyone who headlined a PPV event was synonymous with making money for the company. Over the years, there were a lot of experiments undertaken, and while some paid off, others didn't. It's not hard to forget about some of the headliners who ultimately ended up disappointing.
Here are 10 wrestlers you didn't remember headlined PPVs:
10. Rikishi
In 1999, Rikishi returned to WWE after prior runs as Fatu and The Sultan, and over the course of the next few months, he became a star. Though his prior characters failed to get over, this persona - an obese dancer who liked to rub his behind in his opponents' faces - quickly became a beloved babyface.
That's how Rikishi spent most of his WWE career, and that's how most fans remember him - but in late 2000, he underwent a heel turn when he admitted that he ran over Stone Cold Steve Austin in order to help advance The Rock's career. That briefly made him a hated villain, but by the next year, the company decided to abandon the plan and revert him to his babyface character.
The heel turn wasn't enough to propel him into the main event... except for on one show. At the Armageddon 2000 PPV, Kurt Angle defended the WWE Championship in a six-man Hell in a Cell match. Though Angle ultimately retained the title in the star-studded bout, Rikishi may have had the most memorable moment of the contest, as Undertaker chokeslammed him off the cage and into the flatbed of a ringside truck.