Brock Lesnar's 6 best World Title defenses

#1 Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker (WWE Championship, No Mercy 2002)

Brock Lesnar defeated The Undertaker in a brutal Hell in a Cell match.

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!

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