8 Most Brutal Hardcore Moments Of WWE's PG Era

Around six weeks before SummerSlam 2016, Brock Lesnar returned to UFC for a special one-off match. This clearly gave him a taste for blood, as Randy Orton found out. 

Lesnar and Orton's main event battle is remembered for one thing and one thing only. After about 11 minutes of action, The Beast pinned The Viper to the ground and started pummelling him. He unleashed bare-knuckle and bear-elbow strikes on Orton's skull, as the audience in Brooklyn grew increasingly more uncomfortable. 

Blood began gushing from Orton's forehead. The damage was so severe that the match was called off and Lesnar was awarded a rare victory via technical knockout. Orton received ten staples in his head following this jaw-dropping exchange. The attack was so convincing that Chris Jericho reportedly confronted Lesnar backstage, believing he had gone off-script and hurt his opponent for real. The truth is that this angle was scripted to capitalise on Lesnar's UFC return. 

The result was a disturbingly real display of violence that many commentators agreed went way too far. Still, Orton got a WWE title reign out of it the following year, so that's something.