10 WWE Number One Contenders Nobody Actually Thought Could Win

10. Cain Velasquez

Gosh, this really feels like a lifetime ago. Cain Velasquez made his WWE debut on the very first episode of SmackDown on Fox, confronting Brock Lesnar and setting up a WWE Championship match for Crown Jewel. Forgetting how irrelevant the whole thing made Kofi Kingston and his title reign look, Cain's debut was hardly the show-stopping moment that WWE officials may have hoped it was going to be. Velasquez looked tentative in the squared circle and not even some typically marvellous Lesnar facials could change that.

Did anyone think Cain Velasquez was going dethrone Brock Lesnar at Crown Jewel? Of course not. Not even Cain Velasquez believed it. The two-time UFC Heavyweight Champion may have famously vanquished Lesnar in the Octagon, but MMA and pro wrestling are two very different beasts. Having a rookie like Velasquez beat Brock for the title would have made no sense at all, and the response to Cain's debut suggests it wouldn't have been particularly popular.

It all led to a WWE Championship that was cold enough to freeze off the brass monkey's proverbials. The match itself was an absolute sh*t-show, a two-minute waste of time that practically killed Velasquez in the eyes of pro wrestling fans. Good job, everyone!

Authored by John Bills

Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.

Posted On: 2nd Jun 2020

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Brock Lesnar cain velasquez