10 World Champions The Rock Wrestled Once

2. Brock Lesnar

Rock Brock
WWE.com

Brock Lesnar was but a wee rookie when he faced The Rock for the first and only time on WWE TV, the two headlining the SummerSlam 2002 pay-per-view that must go down in history as the finest SummerSlam of all time. This was Lesnar's true coronation, the moment that The Next Big Thing became a legitimate big thing in professional wrestling.

By pinning The Rock and becoming the WWE Undisputed Champion in the process, Lesnar broke all sorts of records. The Beast Incarnate usurped Rocky as the youngest WWE Champion of all time (a record that would subsequently be broken by Randy Orton), and became the second quickest superstar to win the top title after making their debut, falling 13 days short of Ric Flair's 113 day record.

The Rock took a sabbatical from wrestling after this match to concentrate on his growing career in Hollywood. He would return at the beginning of 2003 as one of the finest incarnations of The Great One, the supremely arrogant Hollywood Rock.

Rocky and Lesnar would actually face each other once more at a WWE house show in 2003, with The Rock getting his win back. Even so, it is only TV and PPV that counts for this list.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.