8 Wrestlers Who Quit On Top

8. Brock Lesnar

There comes a point in everybody's career when they just have to say no to that $45 million contract offer, and put their happiness first. For Brock Lesnar, that meant walking away from his position as WWE's breakout star and returning to his farm in Minnesota, ahead of an ultimately failed tilt at pro-football.

Just two years after becoming the company's youngest ever champion The Beast Incarnate, tired of the gruelling schedule and having accomplished pretty much everything in short order, decided it was time for a change of scenery. He couldn't accept the fact that despite being only being 27 years old, he was in perpetual agony on his weekends off. His employers, meanwhile, couldn't accept the fact they were about to lose their first true new megastar in yonks, and so offered him a preposterous contract extension from the same dream chequebook as Bret Hart's reneged 1996 deal.

Brock was having none of it, and after his marquee match with Goldberg at WrestleMania XX, quit the business. It wouldn't stick; his football dream was ended by a motorcycle crash, and he was back between the ropes - albeit in Japan - by 2005.