Brock Lesnar famously broke Hardcore Holly's neck with a powerbomb during a routine midcard match on the September 12th 2002 Smackdown. The two miscommunicated on the move and Lesnar dumped Holly to the mat. Even though he was in extreme pain, Holly finished the match (and even filmed his infamous Tough Enough season 3 appearance a few days later). Despite rumours to the contrary, Lesnar did not purposefully drop Holly on his neck, nor did Holly 'sandbag' him. That would be incredibly stupid, wouldn't it. Brock was sick and wasn't at full capacity, so he had trouble lifting Holly up, as Holly revealed in his autobiography. Whatever the reason, Holly was heading for over a year on the injured list. Recovery was a long, drawn-out process but at least Hardcore had a ready-made feud for when he came back. WWE began preparing for the feud in November 2003, with Holly continually attacking Brock. It wasn't the most inspiring programme, despite the real-life element. Holly was just never given the chance to look as strong as he should have. Their match at the 2004 Royal Rumble was a colossal disappointment, being cut from an original fifteen to just six minutes and change. Brock won with a single F5 and Holly went back down to the midcard almost immediately afterwards. Holly was hardly surprised, writing in his book that:
Brock didn't want to work with meHe was fine with me when the injury happened and he was fine with me afterwards, but when our first match had happened, I was just somebody to get him over. When I came back, I was still not a top guy. They were going to put me, a mid-level job guy for about a decade, in there with the companys biggest monster? Believe me, I understood why Brock didn't want to work with me he thought he damn sure wasn't going to make any money from that.
Holly wasn't ready for the spot, true, but he was what WWE made him. They had plenty of time to elevate him between his comeback and their match at the Rumble, but they didn't.
