8 Wrestlers Who Saved Their WWE Careers (By Being Awesome At Something Else)
6. Brock Lesnar - Mixed Martial-Arts
Brock Lesnar’s pro wrestling career never needed “saving” as such.
Should he have wished, he could have called Vince McMahon and re-entered the main event picture the very next night, earning enormous sums of money to do so. But he wasn't interested in doing that for simply 'enormous' on the old schedule. He wasn't much interested at all, gauging by his almost hilariously half-hearted performances in Japan.
He did however save the lifestyle UFC afforded him by leveraging his huge success and drawing power there to work Vince McMahon out of more money than any other performer before him. His case of diverticulitis was severe, career-threatening, but ultimately, it effectively worked in his favour. It placed an asterisk over his defeats, thus preserving his aura as a freak killer, which impressed McMahon into promoting him as a preposterously over-powered special attraction.
Of course, when he returned to the octagon in 2016, a doping violation put an asterisk over his comeback victory, but again, it worked in his favour; Lesnar by then was firmly established as the über-heel - a man who killed an entire generation of full-time talent - and it only furthered that perception.