10 Most Shocking First-Time WWE Champions
6. Eddie Guerrero
Eddie Guerrero was certainly deserving of a WWE Championship run. For years, he had been one of the top in-ring performers in the entire business and it was only his own personal demons that prevented him from moving further towards the top of WWE cards anytime sooner.
So when he defeated Brock Lesnar at No Way Out 2004, just one month prior to the grand event of WrestleMania XX in Madison Square Garden, the shock that fans experienced wasn't because of anything Eddie didn't have or didn't do. It was, instead, directed at the notion that WWE would take it's newest flagship performer, an investment of years worth of time and work, and have him soundly defeated just weeks before its biggest event in history.
Brock Lesnar had been built as the Next Big Thing ever since he arrived on the scene in mid-2002 and he amassed a series of victories that no other superstar can claim in that short period of time. Brock cleanly defeated Hulk Hogan, The Rock, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle and others in his first year with WWE and to blow off that heat one month prior to WrestleMania XX was a surprising decision.
Fans were not expecting Eddie, who was definitely small by WWE Champion standards, to leave the Cow Palace with the WWE title, but most were ecstatic when he did.