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It has been announced that newly-crowned WWE Champion Brock Lesnar will be defending his title in just a few weeks against Rey Mysterio at Survivor Series. Lesnar has a storied history with the WWE Championship. In fact, the 8-time World Champion (5-time WWE Champion, 3-time Universal Champion) has never held any gold in WWE except for the top prize.
From becoming the Undisputed Champion by defeating The Rock only 4 months after he debuted, to breaking CM Punk's record 454-day reign as champion (Brock lost the Universal Title after 504 days as champion). Interestingly enough, in his 8 reigns as champion, Brock has defended his title only 23 times on televised events. He usually has a fantastic match when he does defend the championship.
Let us take a look back some of the great ones: Brock Lesnar's 5 best WWE Championship defenses.
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#6 Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe (Universal Title, SummerSlam 2017)
The summer of 2017 was a heck of a ride for fans of Monday Night RAW. Brock Lesnar became the WWE Universal Champion a few months earlier at WrestleMania 33 by defeating Goldberg. It didn't slow down from there. While Brock didn't actually have a match between his Universal title win and his first defense of the belt, he did have one heck of a foe to take down. A very motivated, very angry, very hungry Samoa Joe.
The Superstar was a former NXT Champion but had yet to hold any gold on the main roster. In the end, Joe was unable to dethrone The Beast. Lesnar didn't have another televised match until a month and a half later at SummerSlam, and this time it wasn't just one angry big man coming after him, it was 3.
Competition was extra high because of Lesnar's absence and many men claimed their stake at a chance to try to take away Lesnar's red-and-gold belt. In the end, no man was able to earn a one-on-one match against Brock, so WWE just put the three most dangerous challengers in a match with Lesnar at the same time. Samoa Joe earned another chance, as did a long-time rival of Lesnar, Roman Reigns, and Reigns' most recent beastly rival, Braun Strowman.
As it would turn out, Lesnar actually ended up taken out of the match fairly early and had to be brought out of the arena on a stretcher due to destruction put upon him by his three opponents, most specifically Braun Strowman, who hit Lesnar with anything and everything that wasn't nailed down.
After Strowman and the others spent some time doing big guy things to each other and tearing themselves apart, Lesnar would return to the delight of the live audience. He fought off all three men and in the end he was able to hit the F-5 on Roman Reigns to definitively end the match and hold onto his championship.
#5 & #4 Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins (Universal Title, WrestleMania 35 & SummerSlam 2019)
Seth Rollins seems to have Brock Lesnar's number. Lesnar has defended the championship against Rollins 3 different times, and Rollins has won every time. The first was when Rollins cashed in the Money in the Bank contract and stole the title at WrestleMania 31 (yes, he pinned Roman Reigns but still won the title that Lesnar was defending).
The next is one of the two in this entry and happened at WrestleMania 35. It was an insane spectacle. The match itself (bell-to-bell) was barely 2 and a half minutes long, but the men brawled around ringside for a good few minutes before making it into the ring for their actual title bout. The crowd was going insane, and Rollins did the nearly unthinkable when he beat Lesnar clean in the middle of the ring, something that was almost statistically impossible.
Roman Reigns is the only other guy to beat Lesnar one-on-one for the Universal Title, and it look him approximatey 75 tries. Rollins beat him for it twice... in the same year! Only two men have defeated Lesnar for a World Title since his return in 2012. Roman Reigns did it once and Seth Rollins did it twice.
His other 3 title losses (from August 2002 thru February 2004) came at the hands of The Big Show, Kurt Angle, and Eddie Guerrero. That's a pretty prestigious list, and of all those names, only Seth has been able to do it twice.
That brings us to the second match here, Rollins' Universal Title win at SummerSlam. This match was different from the WrestleMania contest, but not by much. Bell-to-bell it was almost 14 minutes long, so around 5 times as long as the WrestleMania contest, but the pace was absolutely out-of-control, with both men constantly moving, flying, throwing, jumping, kicking, suplexing, stomping -- you get it.
It was non-stop action and as intense of a match as you're going to get. Definitely a match worth checking out if you've never seen it.
#3 Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins (WWE World Title, WrestleMania 31)
Without being hyperbolic at all, it is safe to say that Roman Reigns was the most hated man in WWE (at least judging by the reaction by the live crowds) in 2015. Even a year after Daniel Bryan's huge title victory over Randy Orton and Batista in the main event of WrestleMania XXX, the WWE Universe was still choosing Bryan as their favorite Superstar.
When Roman Reigns won the Royal Rumble in 2015, the crowd was not happy, and even having The Rock himself come to the ring to endorse Reigns as the winner didn't help the crowd in Philadelphia warm up to the former Shield member.
Since the live audiences didn't get what they wanted, they instead chose to cheer Lesnar, who was positioned as the bad guy. Even though he was supposed to be, and acted like a terrible villain, Lesnar was so different from everybody else on the roster that fans couldn't help but cheer for him, especially when they either didn't like or didn't care one way or the other, about anybody on the other side of the ring.
WWE marched onward, however, very strongly pushing Roman Reigns on the fans as the underdog good guy while trying everything possible to make Brock Lesnar in a bad guy bully and an unbeatable monster. It didn't work, because when WrestleMania came around, the crowd in Santa Clara, California was ravenous to see Brock Lesnar tear Roman Reigns to pieces.
That is exactly what happened, yet somehow even though the crowd didn't react the way WWE wanted them to (Reigns as the underdog getting up every time he got knocked down), they still had a massive reaction.
The reaction was that the fans in attendance were angry when the supposed underdog kept getting up, but delighed every time the conquering Beast Incarnate put him back down. Both men threw their best shots at each other and it was the exact spectacle we have come to expect as the main event of WrestleMania.
And then the unthinkable happened. Both men were down after a grueling battle, but there still wasn't a winner or a loser. Seth Rollins' music played inside the cavernous stadium, the crowd went wild (even though he was a hated bad guy) and he cashed in his Money in the Bank contract.
It was the first time the contract was cashed in at WrestleMania, and also the first time it was cashed in during an ongoing match. It was sheer insanity, and made an already great match into an instant classic, and created one of the best "WrestleMania Moments" of all time.
#2 Brock Lesnar vs. Eddie Guerrero (WWE Title, No Way Out 2004)
It seemed impossible that Eddie Guerrero could possibly win the WWE Championship on the final stop to WrestleMania XX back in 2004. Brock Lesnar, much like he is today, was a nearly unstoppable monster and Guerrero was a much smaller man and the clear underdog.
This underdog story worked, as the crowd had loved Eddie Guerrero for many years thanks to his great wrestling and multitude of entertaining personas. It was David versus Goliath, and while (probaby) the majority of the WWE Universe was hoping to see David win this battle, it seemed like a longshot, at best.
This feeling was made even stronger by the fact that it was widely known that WrestleMania XX was going to be Goldberg's final match. Goldberg and Lesnar had been feuding for months, and it only made sense that Lesnar, who had made a career of destroying legends and even putting them into (at least semi) retirement, was going to do the same to Goldberg. Lesnar became the second man to "end Hulkamania", when he defeated Hulk Hogan on an episode of SmackDown in 2002.
He won his first World Title and sent The Rock off to Hollywood at SummerSlam 2002. Later that same year, he tore The Undertaker apart in a way that nobody had ever done. So, of course Lesnar was going to be the guy to end Goldberg's career. He would bring the WWE Championship to WrestleMania and successfully defend it against Goldberg, continuing his run as a dominating champion and ending the career of a surefire Hall of Famer.
But that didn't happen. Either WWE knew that Lesnar was getting ready to leave or they just wanted to give the top title to their hottest babyface leading up to WrestleMania. Either way, Eddie Guerrero took Lesnar to the limit. Lesnar wrestled Kurt Angle in a 60-minute Iron Man match and lasted over 60 minutes in a Royal Rumble match, but the first was stipulated to be 60 minutes, and there were 29 other people in the other.
No man other that the legendary Eddie Guerrero was able to not only last 30 minutes with Lesnar, but actually defeat him in that timeframe as well.
Yes, the match is slightly marred based on the way it ended, as Goldberg took Lesnar out with a spear very shortly befoe Guerrero ascended the top turnbuckle and flew onto Lesnar to defeat him with the Frog Splash. However it doesn't ruin the 28 prior minutes that saw Guerrero take everything Lesnar could possibly throw at him and keep moving forward. It was a great match, easily one of Lesnar's greatest matches, and definitely one of the best matches in WWE history.
#1 Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker (WWE Championship, No Mercy 2002)
Brock Lesnar ran through the entirety of the lower and mid-card roster from April through July of 2002. It was pretty easy work, and the monstrous "Next Big Thing" needed to look for a bigger target, and he definitely found one. Almost exactly 4 months after he debuted the night after WrestleMania in 2002, he set his sights on, and defeated, probably the biggest star in the history of the industry, Hulk Hogan.
Three weeks later he defeated possibly the second biggest star in the history of the business, and the opponent of Hulk Hogan on the night before Lesnar's debut, The Rock. His defeat of The Rock also earned Lesnar his first-ever WWE Championship.
The first man to challenge Brock Lesnar after he defeated The Rock for the WWE Championship was The Undertaker. That is one pretty tall task. The Undertaker was the first man who Brock Lesnar didn't immediately step up to and try to intimidate. In fact, he took a step back.
Lesnar didn't necessarily look scared, but it was clear that when he was eye-to-eye, toe-to-toe with The Deadman, he saw a man who was his equal, or even just a little bit stronger than he was. Their first match in September at the Unforgiven PPV ended in a double disqualification. There was a lot of violence and at the end of the night, The Undertaker threw Lesnar through the giant metal entrance set, destroying it and hurting Lesnar in the process.
Lesnar reacted to this by breaking The Undertaker's hand, which was the first time Lesnar actually used such a tactic, clearly showing how highly he thought of The Undertaker's ability, and how much of a threat he was to take his WWE Championship.
When it was time for the Hell in a Cell match at No Mercy the following month, Lesnar went in at 100% while The Undertaker entered the Cell with a broken hand and a cast. Brock and Undertaker went to war, and it was brutal.
Not the kind of brutal where one guy gets a little bloody, the other guy gets a little bloody and they fight around for a while, but the kind where it looks like they might have actually put two wild animals inside a cage with only a single scrap of meat to fight over.
The match was everything you would want out of Hell in a Cell. It tested Brock's ability to really show his range as a wrestler, since he couldn't just toss Undertaker around like a rag doll, and he lived up to the hype that Paul Heyman had beaten into everyone's heads for months.
Not only is this Lesnar's best title defense, but there's a strong argument that this is Lesnar's best match, period. Let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree with that one!
Have you checked out Sportskeeda's new feature here? Vote for your favourite match at this location, folks.
