It's hard to believe now, giving his incredible popularity and mythical status, but in 2002 The Undertaker was second only to Triple H on the list of most hated WWE performers. He was accused of holding down/burying WCW talent like Mike Awesome and DDP during the Invasion and of being past-his-prime as a performer. Undertaker was set to be new WWE Champion (no longer undisputed since Triple H had awarded himself the World Heavyweight Championship) Brock Lesnar's first programme. Lesnar had been booked as an unstoppable monster, running through Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, The Rock and others on his way to the gold. Surely that run would continue with a decisive victory over the Dead Man? Not quite. The Undertaker had other ideas and used his backstage pull to book a disqualification finish to their Unforgiven top-liner. The original finish was supposed to be Matt Hard costing 'Taker the match but 'Big Evil' didn't feel like doing the job. Worse still, after their post-match brawl The Undertaker smashed Lesnar through the Unforgiven set. The image that fans were left with was not of the unstoppable rookie but of The Undertaker standing tall. This did lead to their memorable Hell in a Cell match the next month at No Mercy, true, but there were other ways of getting there without screwing the fans out of a finish.
