10 Wrestling Moments That Made You Mark Out

This was never supposed to happen.

For all that Hulk Hogan was responsible for the lofty perch WWE sat upon, fans had long, long since moved on from him. He'd been on the other side of the trenches during the Monday Night Wars and was comfortably received as a hated heel upon his return to the company in the wake of the underwhelming WCW Invasion angle.

In his place had come a whole host of new stars; Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, Triple H, Chris Jericho, Mankind, Kane - the list could go on for days - but, at the top of it, would come The Rock. The only man who has ever come close to what Hogan achieved as both a Sports Entertainer and a mainstream crossover star, The People's Champion was the heir apparent to that particular throne in 2001.

Thus a WrestleMania match between the two was a no-brainer, and one that required virtually no build whatsoever. The Rock would challenge Hollywood Hogan, and that would be more than enough to fill the Skydome.

However, while the build went perfectly to plan, the match itself did not. Seemingly out of nowhere, the fans in attendance rejected it in the context it was presented, and instead viewed it as a clash of two generations and their most beloved stars. Hogan was, suddenly, every inch the hero Rock was, and with the young pretender dominating the match, the grizzled veteran suddenly looked like the valiant underdog.

Legend has it that this nearly led the two men to call an audible and give Hogan the win, but that would do a disservice for the improbable, scarcely believable, genuinely organic WrestleMania moment that saw the first "hulking out" seen in a WWE ring for nearly a decade.