10 Most Vicious WWE Grudge Matches Ever
10. The Undertaker Vs. Brock Lesnar - No Mercy 2002
In August 2002, The Undertaker was drafted to Smackdown and immediately placed into contention for Brock Lesnar's WWE Championship. Scheduled to face one another at Unforgiven in September, an already volatile situation escalated when Lesnar chose to intimidate the Undertaker's then wife Sara, assaulting the Dead Man when he stepped in to stop it.
The match at Unforgiven went to an unusual finish, when after being heavily bumped three times and physically threatened by Lesnar the referee became tired of trying to officiate over a slugfest and disqualified both men. That non-finish led to a Hell In A Cell match at No Mercy in October.
However, Lesnar and his manager Paul Heyman weren't done playing games. They introduced a young woman who claimed to know the Undertaker rather intimately, and insinuated her into Smackdown TV tapings to accuse him of having an affair with her... but neglecting to tell her that he was married. That, coupled with an injury to the Dead Man's hand caused by Lesnar, led to a remarkably personal Hell In A Cell match for the WWE Championship.
What followed was possibly the most brutal Hell In A Cell match in WWE history, if you discount the Mankind/Undertaker stuntfest from 1998, which was laid out that way precisely because Mick Foley knew that he and the Undertaker couldn't deliver a match like this. The situation was significantly different four years later.
Where the Undertaker of 1998 was still saddled with the slower, supernatural Lord Of Darkness gimmick and had a broken foot to boot, the 2002 Undertaker was two years into his more realistic persona, and had progressed through the American Badass through heel Big Evil. He was in fantastic shape, lean and well-muscled. He'd need to be, against a twenty-five year old Brock Lesnar with something to prove.
While he didn't have a broken foot, he did have a broken hand - but they worked it into the story, Heyman and Lesnar trying to have the cast banned and failing, leaving the Dead Man with both a potential liability and a potential weapon.
Despite this, it was Lesnar's time: the younger man went over, in a match which saw both competitors and Heyman bleeding. Filled with gore and almost casual violence, this and the first Hell In A Cell against Shawn Michaels are the benchmarks for this kind of cage match.