These days, the WWE main event picture is pretty static. You only have to look at the ultimate barometer - the Wrestlemania main event - to see that headliners fall into two categories - those that main event one year and then main event the year after and those who main event one year and have gone from the company by the following 'Maina. The former are guys like Undertaker and HHH, the latter are the Austin, Hogan, Rock special attractions. The closest we come are generally guys called Chris - Benoit and Jericho - who return to the upper mid-card from whence they came, circling around until their time comes to do another job for Hunter. But it wasn't always like this. Eddie Guerrero going from the Smackdown title match at WM20 to an opening match spot-fest with Rey Jr is nothing compared to the following. I give you the five most ignominious falls from grace in Wrestlemania history.
 

Andre the Giant

I considered the following - let's call it number 6 on our list - which is Andre The Giant's late 80s Mania career. After featuring in the main event of WM3, and then in the biggest advertised match at WM4 (his second round tournament bout with Hulk Hogan) he found himself in a feud with Jake "The Snake" Roberts at Wrestlemania 5. It was one of the higher profile matches on the card which is why it isn't part of the top five but the angle leading up to the match - that Andre collapsed in fear at the sight of Jake's snake - was rather humiliating for a man who had previously been portrayed as force stoppable only by the power of Hulkamania. It was a feud which did nothing for either man - Andre hadn't started jobbing left, right and centre so Roberts couldn't beat him. The match ended up as a lame DQ after Andre beat Jake up too savagely and the referee disqualified him to save The Snake. Roberts claims that his babyface push was sabotaged by a Hulk Hogan scared of a rival to his popularity. While I don't think for one moment that Roberts really was a threat to Hogan's throne, this feud was designed only to produce losers.
 

5. Paul Orndorff

Orndorff was always the fourth man in the original Wrestlemania main event. More people probably remember Cowboy Bob's bungled interference leading to the pin fall than remember who it was who was actually pinned. By the time Wrestlemania 2 rolled around, Orndorff was a mid card babyface and involved in a feud with equivalent mid card heel Don Muraco. The match - which ended in a double count out - opened the show for most Wrestlemania 2 viewers (the event was uniquely held in three different arenas so viewers on the west coast saw the matches in a different order to the rest of the country). Orndorff was about to have a rocket strapped to his back with the Hogan feud but this non-entity of a match gave no indication of the big plans they had for Mr #1derful.
 

4. Lex Luger

Wrestlemania 10 was unique because there were two world title matches. The joint winners of the Royal Rumble - Lex Luger and Bret Hart - would each get a title shot at Yokozuna. Luger faced 'Zuna first, while Bret had a groundbreaking match with his brother Owen which would stand as WM's best match for nearly two hours until the ladder gimmick debuted on PPV. The Luger match was a flop - as was his entire time as the franchise of the company - and by Wrestlemania 11 he had been pushed aside in favour of The Kliq. Luger formed an extremely short lived tag team with Davey Boy Smith - "the Allied Powers" because they had the same gimmick but different homelands - which defeated Jacob and Eli Blu in the opening match of the pay per view. As you can imagine, any match which featured Lex Luger, the Harris Brothers and Davey Boy Smith during his drugged up, bulked up, dreadlocked hell was doomed to fail.
 

3. Sgt Slaughter

Sgt Slaughter received one almighty push in 1991. He became a member of the exclusive "pinned the Warrior" club (a club Hulk Hogan was so obsessed with joining that WCW paid over $2m to Warrior for a couple of matches and one all important j-o-b) and WWF believed he and Hogan could draw a full house at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. They couldn't and the show was moved but Slaughter was right at the centre of WWF storylines throughout 1991. By 1992 he had turned babyface, declared "I want my country back" and was back at Wrestlemania in an eight man tag. He was on the winning side but the fact that the other seven men included Virgil, Jim Duggan, the Nasty Boys, Repoman, & The Mountie makes this one heck of a tumble.
 

2. Randy Savage

Randy Savage was hot as heck in 1988 as WWF champion and one half of the Mega Powers. The ultra-slow build to his match with Hogan saw Savage become slowly more and more jealous of the Hulkster's relationship with Elizabeth and it culminated in the so called "explosion" live on NBC's "The Main Event". Wrestlemania 5 saw Hogan pin Savage clean and take some of the shine off the subsequent summer of rematches. Savage, who should've won the IC title from the Honky Tonk Man on the show where Andre pinned Hogan but ended up with the WWF title as a "consolation", would fail night after night in matches with Hulk. This time his consolation prize was the "crown". Macho Man Randy Savage beat the heck out of Jim Duggan (who had beaten King Haku weeks earlier) and was rechristened Macho King. A more absurd name has rarely featured in the annuls of wrestling history. The crown, the ever more colourful outfits and the squawking Queen Sherri helped Savage lose what credibility his one-sided feud with Hogan had left him with and just a year after Hogan vs Savage topped Wrestlemania 5 Savage was in a mixed tag match at Wrestlemania 6. Savage and Sherri vs Dusty Rhodes and his sidekick Sapphire. This would've topped the list but for the fact that Savage vs Rhodes was at least a big deal. The women being added was a joke but it was still legend vs legend.
 

1. King Kong Bundy

Legend vs Legend doesn't apply in the number one entry on our list. Wrestlemania 2 was headlined by Hulk Hogan vs King Kong Bundy inside a steel cage. Hogan won, naturally, but being a cage match meant Bundy didn't lay down for Hogan. Bundy remained a monster, a key powerhouse in the Bobby Heenan "Family" who terrorised the Hulkster, Andre the Giant and the rest of the WWF's top babyfaces. He must've done something terrible, however, to end up facing Hillbilly Jim at Wrestlemania 3 in a comedy match. But it gets worse. It could've been an effective match - Bundy squashing the popular-but-simple Jim would've helped him retain his monster aura at a time when Hogan was without a top opponent (Andre wasn't going to do the traditional post-Maina house show rematches). Bundy didn't crush Jim, it ended as a DQ loss when he body slammed a midget. Yes - it wasn't Bundy vs Jim, it was Bundy and two little people vs Jim and two dwarves. Bundy's actions caused his own team mates to turn on him in a show of stunted solidarity. Loser in a midget tag match, henpecked by a quartet of minis and unable to beat Hillbilly Jim. Quite a tumble from the main event.
 

A special mention