Coming off an impressive collegiate wrestling career for the University of Minnesota, where he became the NCAA Division I Heavyweight Champion his senior year, Lesnar made his WWE debut in 2002 and was quickly nicknamed “The Next Big Thing” by his advocate, Paul Heyman. Later that year, he became the youngest WWE World Heavyweight Champion in company history, at age 25, by defeating Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at SummerSlam.
Lesnar later won two additional WWE World Heavyweight Championships and had notable rivalries with WWE Superstars Undertaker, John Cena and Big Show, among others. Lesnar’s first stint with WWE concluded at WrestleMania 20 in 2004, where he was defeated by Bill Goldberg, the focus of WWE 2K17’s pre-order bonus content.
Following his WWE departure, Lesnar explored an NFL career following interest from the Minnesota Vikings. He also fought for several mixed martial arts promotions before signing a deal with UFC in 2007. Lesnar quickly became one of the organization’s biggest stars. During his time with UFC, Lesnar became UFC Heavyweight Champion; he tied a UFC record for the most consecutive successful Heavyweight Championship title defenses and headlined one of the highest-selling and most prominent pay-per-view events in UFC history.
Lesnar returned to WWE in 2012 and has made a relentless, unwavering impression since stepping foot back inside the ring. Alongside renewing old rivalries, Lesnar shocked the WWE Universe at WrestleMania 30 by defeating Undertaker and ending his legendary 21-0 WrestleMania win streak. At SummerSlam in 2014, Lesnar won his fourth WWE World Heavyweight Championship by defeating John Cena and delivering 16 of his signature German suplexes throughout the match. Suplex City then became pop-culture lexicon across WWE live events, traditional and social media, merchandise, lyrics, memes and more.
