7 Most Surprising WWE PPV Main Eventers Ever

If JBL's ascendancy to the main event in 2004 was surprising, so to was his longtime partner Ron 'Farooq' Simmons' climb up the WWE card in 1997.

Unlike JBL, however, Simmons had been a main event player in the past. He wasn't just some career midcarder getting a call because he was 'due' a run. On the contrary, Simmons was the first ever black WCW World Heavyweight Champion, having downed Vader at a WCW house show in August 1992.

The former member of Doom held the belt for five months but was then quickly relegated to the midcard and eventually joined the WWF a couple of years after his WCW contract expired. After a truly rotten spell wearing a misshaped helmet and working under a gladiator gimmick, he was repackaged as the leader of the pro-black group the Nation of Domination, which was much more in keeping with the Attitude Era.

The new super-serious Farooq was granted a WWE Title shot against backstage buddy The Undertaker at the 1997 King of the Ring. There was not a particularly strong build for this one, which leads me to believe that WWE felt the KOTR tournament would sell itself and that the main event was fine. Besides, there was nobody else for that spot, since all the good workers were already vying for the prestigious crown.

The match itself was, for lack of a better term, laboured, and didn't exactly electrify a crowd that had already witnessed a Steve Austin versus Shawn Michaels barnburner. 'Taker won the match (obviously), which was supposed to set up a match between the Deadman and Ahmed Johnson at the next supercard, Canadian Stampede, before the master of the Pearl River Plunge fell injured.

Farooq then started sliding back down the card on his way to being usurped by a young blue-chipper named Rocky Maivia...