10 Wrestlers Who Narrowly Missed A WWE WrestleMania Main Event
9. Chris Jericho (WrestleMania 2000)
12 months later, Mankind would eventually get his taste of a WrestleMania main event - though it allegedly came at the expense of an unfortunate Chris Jericho.
The story goes that Jericho, having recently made his big debut, had been fast-tracked for the main event of WrestleMania 2000, where he was set to face Triple H, the Rock and the Big Show in a Fatal 4-Way Elimination match for the WWF Championship. However, plans were seemingly changed, as Mankind, now competing as plain old Mick Foley, was instead inserted into the 4-Way.
What lends to much weight to this rumour is the fact that Jericho was prominently featured on the original promotional materials for the event: promotional materials that are explicitly referenced in his second book, Undisputed, and still to this day appear on the thumbnail of the WrestleMania 2000 event on the WWE Network.
In his book, Jericho suggests that he "wasn’t delivering the goods" and that’s why he was "kicked out" of the show-closing match. Luckily for him, though, he’d make amends a couple of years later when he entered WrestleMania X8 with two World titles in tow as the company’s first-ever Undisputed Champion.
Not a bad turnaround, all in all.