Ranking All 19 WWE King Of The Ring Winners

4. Brock Lesnar (2002)

King Of The Ring Winners Bret Hart Brock Lesnar Kurt Angle
WWE

When Brock Lesnar was bestowed with the nickname “The Next Big Thing,” it wasn’t hyperbole.

Bursting onto the scene the day after WrestleMania X8, Lesnar plowed through everyone put in front of him until he won the King of the Ring tournament three months after debuting. Two months later, he parlayed that KOTR victor to become the youngest WWE world champion when he defeated The Rock (of all people) at SummerSlam. He won a feud with Undertaker before losing the WWE Championship at Survivor Series.

Brock would regain the title from Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 19, lose it to Angle in July, and regain it again in September 2003.

Lesnar’s meteoric rise was unprecedented in WWE, and his King of the Ring victory really was another stepping stone along the way for him. But it was an important step, and you can’t deny that he was an exceptionally successful king.

Contributor
Contributor

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.