Eight years away from WWE and achieving a great deal of success in MMA as UFC Heavyweight Champion meant that Brock Lesnar was a very different man than he was when he left the company after WrestleMania XX. He had for all intents and purposes left his wrestling career behind. So when he decided to come back in 2012, it was like starting all over again. Sure, Lesnar came in with a two-year history with WWE, but he was feeding off his MMA career this time around, not his amateur wrestling background. The Next Big Thing had become the Beast Incarnate. But one thing that hadnt changed was Brock making his first appearance a memorable one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCzBf-jo84o Lesnar stalked to the ring the night after WrestleMania XXVIII and promptly his an F-5 on John Cena, kicking off a feud that has lasted off and on for nearly two years. Brocks re-debut on Raw was enough to send grown men into hysterics, jumping up and down, elated to the point where you might have thought their favorite team just won their league championship. Three years later, Lesnar has ended the Undertakers WrestleMania streak and spent seven months as an indestructible WWE World Heavyweight Champion. When Michael Cole said that 2012 night that the complexion of the WWE has been drastically changed, he actually was speaking the truth.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
