10 Most Outstanding Career Revivals In WWE

At the end of 2011, Brock Lesnar was supposedly a spent force. Having shot to the top of UFC in 2008 just as he had in WWE in 2002, he’d spent much of 2009 to 2011 on the shelf with a severe intestinal condition, dropping the UFC Heavyweight Championship in fairly humiliating fashion to Cain Velasquez via first round TKO in October 2010.

By the time he lost his comeback fight with Alistair Overeem via first round TKO and unceremoniously retired from MMA competition in December 2011, Lesnar’s fabled drawing ability had been cut in half; UFC 141 pulled in 535,000 buys compared to the million plus that he was used to commanding.

But WWE fans didn’t care that Lesnar’s star had fallen in legit combat sports. Brock Lesnar’s April 2012 return on Monday Night RAW came after the rumour mill had been in overdrive for weeks. As far as they were concerned, the big man was the real deal, a main event rainmaker, and the thunderous pop Lesnar received on arrival justified every last bit of the hype.

Some insist that Lesnar’s reborn WWE career stalled almost immediately when he was booked to lose his first match back to John Cena, and fed to Triple H’s wobbly ego in a disappointing, disjointed series leading into spring 2013.

However, a year later he had annihilated Mark Henry and the Big Show, beaten the Undertaker at WrestleMania XXX and was poised to murder Cena for the WWE title at SummerSlam.

The Beast was back.