10 Unlikeliest WWE WrestleMania Main-Eventers
8. Chris Benoit
Warning: Chris Benoit elephant in the room. Yadda-yadda, you know the drill.
Chris Benoit was never meant to be the a top guy in any capacity. He was relatively short, and on the mic, he had the presence of a tumbleweed. But through persistence, hard work, and perhaps just being in the right place at the right time, he earned the prestigious honor of closing out the 20th WrestleMania.
Benoit was always revered for his technical prowess. From his start in Stampede, to his runs in New Japan, Benoit combined the rough, Calgary style with innovative junior heavyweight offense, setting the bar for smaller wrestlers along with Jushin Liger and Brian Pillman. In WCW, he was a perennial upper-midcarder, but was never allowed to break the glass ceiling due to his size and the backstage politics of the time. As the company grew more chaotic, he realized he needed to hightail it out of there, and so he did with other WCW mid-carders. They were redubbed The Radicalz once they arrived in WWE.
From then on, Benoit maintained his upper-midcard status, never quite reaching the level of top main-eventer. That is, until 2004, when, perhaps just out of a desire to get an underdog story over for WrestleMania, Benoit won the Royal Rumble, and he went on to beat Triple H and Shawn Michaels for the big gold belt.
Say what you will about what happened afterward, but after an entire career working hard, Benoit earned the spotlight and took it for all it was worth.