Ranking 10 WWE Matches That Turned Wrestlers Into Superstars

It's no secret that The Undertaker was pretty much WWE's anchor for two decades, and in that time The Dead Man made household names out of dozens of fledgling wrestlers. He gave major career boosts to guys like Kane, Batista, The Great Khali, Vladimir Kozlov, Jeff Hardy, and the previously mentioned Mick Foley.

But perhaps his most impressive rub pushed The Next Big Thing onto a path that would eventually make him the highest paid-per-match performer on the WWE roster.

Despite beating The Rock at SummerSlam a couple of months earlier to become the youngest WWE Champion in history, Lesnar still hadn't climbed all the way up the ladder. To some fans, the new champ smelled like a fluke. So to legitimize Lesnar as a world beater, Vince McMahon sent in The Phenom, along with his trusty cell.

The match was a beautiful, bloody, and surprisingly methodical back-and-forth that played up Lesnar's strength and Taker's resilience. Nobody had thrown Taker around the way Lesnar did on that night, and it was wild to see. When all was said and done, Lesnar was no longer a star on the rise. He'd firmly planted his flag atop WWE Mountain as a megastar with the full force of the company behind him.