6 wrestlers legitimately hurt by Brock Lesnar

There have been very few characters who have been as believable as Brock Lesnar in his current avatar of that of a beast. A large part of the believability stems from his resume – a former NCAA champion, former multi-time WWE World champion and then to cap it, a former UFC Heavyweight champion.

An accomplished resume such as that is enough for audiences to buy into his legitimacy as an athlete in the world of ‘sports-entertainment’. Add to that a physically imposing look and a borderline ‘shoot’ style and you have the perfect recipe for an unstoppable monster. While as an audience, watching a monster run rampage is fun, the same can’t be said for the hapless opponents who step into the ring with him who are caught unawares at times by his overzealousness. We take a look at the 6 such times when ‘The Beast’ really did hurt guys when he wasn’t supposed to:

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#6 Shawn Michaels

A notoriously ‘soft’ worker going by records and accounts, ‘The Heartbreak Kid’ must have been thanking his stars that he never had to step into the ring against a man with as physical a style as that of Lesnar.

The legend had been retired for a couple of years when he was in the corner of his best friend Triple H, who took on Brock Lesnar in an intense personal grudge match at Wrestlemania 29. In what was a blow-away spot in the match, HBK jumped on the mat and tried to interfere in the match when Brock shoved him off the apron. In what was a small spot in a match of such magnitude, Michaels got potatoed with a stiff forearm for his troubles and was soon caught bleeding from his nose.

The night only got worse for the Hall of Famer as he never managed to get his revenge as he ended up getting an F-5 too when he tried to interfere again!

#5 Roman Reigns

The ruler of the ‘Roman Empire’ is a tough human-being and nowhere was it more evident than at Wrestlemania this year when he went toe-to-toe with the Beast in what was a fight more than anything else. Mostly a one-sided whupping by Lesnar, Reigns got in some solid shots of his own but paid the price for it via a beating at the hands of an even more angered Lesnar.

Two moments stick out from the match which saw certified ‘potatoed’ by Lesnar. There was a resounding slap on ‘The Chosen One’ by an intense Lesnar which in the replays showed Reigns being legitimately knocked silly, as the slap landed square behind his ear. The second one was the stiffest clothesline I have ever seen on anybody as Lesnar thwarted Reigns’ comeback with one that sent him out of the ring.

As was evidenced by a sore version of Reigns the following night on RAW, Reigns may have got more than what he bargained for when he went against ‘The Beast Incarnate’.

#4 The Big Show

In early 2014, WWE’s resident giant The Big Show was involved in a program with ‘The Beast incarnate’ leading up to the Royal Rumble of that year. During the program, Show talked about how he didn’t like Lesnar back in the early 2000s’ when he was a full-timer and many in the know, believed him.

Lesnar feuded with the Big Show extensively during his run then and many times were known to impose his will on the then 500-pounder by getting him to be on the receiving end of multiple suplexes and slams in a single match, which had caused the giant to hurt himself and miss periods of time away from the ring.

But the travails weren’t over for the gentle giant as, during the match at the 2014 Royal Rumble, he was on the receiving end of never-ending chair shots from Lesnar, which numbed the watching audience in shock. In a particularly reckless one, Lesnar landed a hard chair-shot on Show’s elbow he had pulled across his chest, resulting in a sickening thump, causing Big Show to swear loudly, which the WWE mics caught. ‘This is bulls**t’ muttered the giant as he faced a long night ahead as the pounding had just begun!

#3 Kurt Angle

In what was the first time in a WWE ring, two accomplished amateur wrestlers were set to go at it in Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar, in the year 2003. The two for the first time met at Wrestlemania 19 in the main-event, which was a spectacular match and too good for the creative to finish up the rivalry with just a single match.

When Kurt Angle returned from his neck surgery following WM 19, he soon found himself in a heated program with ‘The Next Big Thing’ at the time. What followed were a series of amazing matches between two gifted athletes, but with very real consequences for Kurt.

Given the level of competition between the 2 alpha-males, as both have admitted, the matches were much more ‘real’ than it was supposed to be. A series of running clotheslines in the corner on Kurt by Lesnar ended up with Angle starting to suffer from neck issues again and kick-started his dependency on painkillers, which in many of his peers’ words, put him on ‘death-watch’ for a while.

#2 John Cena

Lesnar’s first feud in his comeback to the WWE was against the leader of the ‘Ce-nation’, John Cena. Cena was everything he had come back to conquer as he began his quest to bring back ‘legitimacy’ to the WWE.

In just his second night in the company, Lesnar busted open an unsuspecting Cena with a punch that was more ‘UFC’ than ‘WWE’ as Cena was bloodied up after a brawl on an edition of RAW. That incident must have been the reason why till date, Lesnar hasn’t thrown punches to the face of his opponents since then.

Unfortunately for Cena, that wasn’t the sole case of getting busted up by Lesnar as in the match at Extreme Rules that year, he was on the receiving end of multiple elbows (who allowed that in WWE is just astounding!) to the cranium by an extremely dangerous Brock Lesnar that cut him open and the situation got so bad that doctors had to check on Cena periodically. The only redeeming thing came when Cena picked up the win on ‘The Beast’ after a hard-fought match.

#1 Bob Hardcore Holly

From one notoriously stiff worker to another, Lesnar vs Holly was a match that was rooted in reality as both prided themselves on being ‘legit’. While Holly had worked snug all of his career, he had never dealt with someone the size, strength and agility of Brock Lesnar.

The match, to the trained eye, was stiff as anything we had seen from Holly before and there were points in the match when one could see Lesnar get increasingly irate. In a moment that stemmed from Lesnar’s lack of experience combined with appropriate reaction from Holly, we saw Holly land squarely on his neck from a botched attempt at a powerbomb.

While to this day Holly claims the incident to be an accident, it can be clearly seen from the video that Lesnar, who was throwing around Big Show with ease at the time, was just plain reckless with the safety of his fellow worker in the ring.

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