Brock Lesnar shattered a couple of myths on August 17, 2014, en route to another world title.
In the most lopsided championship match in WWE history, Lesnar suplexed John Cena 16 times at SummerSlam to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship before a shocked crowd at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
As fans fell silent, a small child never gave up, chanting “Let’s go, Cena,” over and over.
But it was for naught.
Following a second F5 from Lesnar, Cena’s body wilted as the referee counted to three,
and a new champion was crowned.
As Lesnar and his advocate, Paul Heyman, celebrated, WWE’s cameras panned to the crowd. Adults gasped and held their heads in horror, as if they had witnessed a tragedy. A young boy appeared to be in tears.
But “The Beast” didn’t just destroy the legend of Super Cena that night. He obliterated a certain perception of what a pro wrestler should be, as he morphed into a two-move wrecking machine.
Though Lesnar later coined the term “Suplex City” the following year at WrestleMania 31, he broke ground in L.A. at Cena’s expense. For the next 12 years, Lesnar’s matches were mostly glorified spam fests: suplex after suplex after suplex after suplex after suplex…
Occasionally, he’d use a Kimura or bloody someone with an intentionally stiff elbow. Otherwise, it was a series of German suplexes followed by an F5 for the win.
That didn’t always go over well with fans online, especially as the part-time Lesnar often took WWE’s top prize with him into hibernation for months at a time.
In arenas and stadiums, though, fans counted along with every suplex delivered. At WrestleMania 33 against Bill Goldberg, fans called for a tenth suplex to the WCW icon. Lesnar obliged them, then put Goldberg away with an F5 to win the Universal Championship.
Thanks to his minimalist moveset, Lesnar became wrestling’s Loch Ness Monster — a mythical creature whose presence could not be denied. More importantly, he proved that less is truly more — that just a handful of moves, done with purpose at the right time, can tell a more compelling story than a match with an endless display of offense ever could.
