Brock Lesnar made his WWE main roster on the March 18th 2002 episode of Monday Night Raw. Flanked by Paul Heyman, Lesnar attacked Al Snow, Maven and Spike Dudley. However, it wouldn’t be long until the star had his sights set on much bigger goals.
Victory in the 2002 King of the Ring tournament booked Lesnar a date with WWE Undisputed Champion The Rock at SummerSlam.
On his way to his showdown with The Great One, Lesnar also crossed paths with Hulk Hogan and demolished the legend in a match on SmackDown. The end of the match came via referee’s stoppage with Hogan trapped in a Bear Hug. Over the course of his entire career Hogan had rarely been defeated so decisively and so brutally.
Hulk Hogan Rejected Second Match With Brock Lesnar
Following the defeat Hogan disappeared from WWE television and wouldn’t return until early 2003, however, there was a pitch for him to return sooner. Speaking on his Something To Wrestle podcast, Bruce Prichard revealed that there were plans for Hogan to return at Survivor Series for a second clash with now Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar.
However, Hogan wanted to come back and get revenge on Lesnar, while the company had other ideas.
“Well, I think more than anything, it was a lot of it, you know, Hulk thinking, ‘Well, god, I come back, he has already beaten me once. He destroyed me. He put me out. So one would think that the only logical thing to do was to come back and get his revenge. But you’re talking about the guy that you were looking at for the future in Brock. It isn’t realistic for Hulk to come back and beat Brock,” said Prichard. “Especially at that point in his career. And Hulk wasn’t really in favor of that. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t see that.”
Continuing on, Prichard stated that if Hogan came back for the Survivor Series match, he wanted to emerge the winner. By contrast, WWE wanted to continue to build Lesnar as one of their biggest stars, this would have meant another defeat for Hogan.
“He thought if he could come back and face Brock, that he felt he really needed to go over. I don’t think the championship was much of a deal as it was for the returning babyface to avenge the guy that put him out. And that’s not what we were looking for with Brock. We were looking to build Brock. So that quickly got stalled, and we went to look for a different opponent.”
At Survivor Series 2002 Brock Lesnar was defeated by The Big Show after Paul Heyman aligned himself with his rival.
H/t to Sportskeeda