The Rock vs. Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2002: A look back at the crowd's reaction

The wildest part of Lesnar dethroning The Rock at SummerSlam 2002 isn't the win itself — it's that the crowd had basically already turned on The Rock before the bell even rang. The Rock's fan support had been sliding since beating Hogan at WrestleMania 18 that same year, and by August it had cratered — the crowd was fully behind Lesnar, with "Rocky sucks" chants breaking out during the match itself. WWE didn't even need a storyline to make people root against The Rock; his real-world Hollywood pivot did that work for them. And Lesnar hadn't been on WWE TV that long before this. He'd only debuted five months earlier, and this run capped a genuinely absurd rookie year for him. Beating a guy at that level of stardom that fast, becoming the youngest champion in company history in the process, isn't something WWE books for just anybody. Real torch-passing doesn't need a script — sometimes the live crowd just decides who they're done with.