15 Exact Moments Failed WWE Ruthless Aggression Gimmicks Actually Got Over

8. Brock Lesnar | October 20, 2002

Brock Lesnar made an immediate and mind-blowing impression upon his March 18, 2002 debut. 

He smashed Spike Dudley with such disturbing reckless force, with an organ-squelching spree of powerbombs, that it’s a wonder nobody had to scrape the back of Spike’s head from the ring mat. If a film production company ever requires a sound effect for a murder scene involving a blunt object, they need not hire a foley artist. They need only rip the audio from the third powerbomb. 

As awesomely violent as the scene was, it didn’t get Lesnar over as such. It took a while for Lesnar to maintain his aura throughout the body of a match. His two wins en route to being crowned King of the Ring were not good; the semi-final versus Test in particular was weirdly long and competitive. Even at SummerSlam, when he defeated the Rock for the Undisputed WWE title, he was not quite there; the match, while good and loud, felt more like the obvious destination of a mega-push than an earned breakthrough moment. It was at No Mercy where Lesnar truly felt like the headliner WWE had insisted he was. 

He cleanly mutilated the Undertaker in a gruesome Hell In A Cell match, which was more claustrophobic and ugly than the diet stunt show the attraction had become. Bloody and harrowing, there wasn’t a single second in which Lesnar did not feel like a killer. WWE chose the perfect visual with which to convey Lesnar’s ascent; when he stood on top of the Cell, he felt like a demigod of combat sports violence above literally everybody.