10 WWE Stars Who Briefly Flirted With The Main Event

OK, John Cena's decade-long run at the top of the wrestling tree has been anything but brief, but cast your mind back to April 2003. The 'Doctor of Thuganomics' was little more than a fresh-faced rookie - and, what's more, one who had been left with little to occupy his time over the WrestleMania season just gone - yet somehow rapped his way to a WWE title match with newly crowned champion Brock Lesnar at Backlash.

That sounds awfully familiar, but before you go penciling in Jinder for the headline spot of WrestleMania 35 (which would, rather satisfyingly, match the time-line for Cena's crowning moment in 2005), it's worth remembering that Cena was pretty much ear-marked as a future star from the moment he stepped through the WWE door. Backlash 2003 was less a stab in the dark than it was testing the waters for what was, inevitably, to come.