What Professional Wrestling Can Teach Us About the Underdog Story

At WrestleMania XXX, Daniel Bryan defeated Triple H, then went on to beat Randy Orton and Batista in the main event to become WWE World Heavyweight Champion. By the time Bryan climbed the turnbuckles with both titles, the New Orleans crowd had spent much of the evening chanting along with him.

The result was predetermined, of course. Professional wrestling is built around planned outcomes, and Bryan’s championship victory was the conclusion to a storyline that had developed over months. But knowing how wrestling works didn’t stop the audience from investing in the possibility that Bryan might finally overcome the people standing in his way.

That is one of wrestling’s greatest strengths. It understands the appeal of the underdog better than almost any other form of sports entertainment.

The formula is familiar. A smaller competitor challenges a physically imposing champion. A newcomer faces an established star. A wrestler who has spent years falling short gets another opportunity, with the audience hoping this time will be different.

In competitive sport, nobody writes the ending. Yet a decade of betting data analyzed by Sports Illustrated suggests that some of the most interesting underdog stories involve teams that, much like Bryan, already possess the ability to win. They simply enter a particular contest with expectations working against them.

Wrestling makes the audience believe an upset is possible

Bryan’s WrestleMania victory worked because WWE had spent months establishing the obstacles in front of him. His opponents had more political influence within the storyline, greater physical advantages or more favorable positions within the company. Bryan kept finding ways to remain relevant.

By the time WrestleMania arrived, the audience understood why he was supposed to lose and had plenty of reasons to believe he could win.

Rey Mysterio’s rise to the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 22 followed a different route. His size made him an obvious outsider against larger opponents, while his speed, technical ability and popularity gave audiences something to believe in.

Wrestling has also shown how the same character can occupy different positions over time. A wrestler who spends years chasing a championship can eventually become the dominant titleholder that someone else must overcome.

The underdog is therefore a role within a particular rivalry, rather than a permanent description of the performer.

That becomes interesting when compared with real sports.

Sports Illustrated examined betting results from 2016 through 2026 across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA basketball and NCAA football, identifying the teams that won most frequently when listed as underdogs.

The Kansas City Chiefs topped the entire study, winning 20 of their 30 games as outsiders. Their 66.67% win rate was followed by Baltimore at 61.9% and Pittsburgh at 60%.

Kansas City is hardly an obscure franchise overcoming a lack of resources. During the period studied, the Chiefs became one of the NFL’s most successful teams, winning multiple Super Bowls and establishing themselves as regular championship contenders.

As Tribuna explored in its article on why NFL teams dominated the ranking of America’s most successful sporting underdogs, the top three positions all belonged to established football franchises. Kansas City was rarely the outsider, but when it was, the team proved particularly difficult to beat.

A WWE audience would recognize the underlying idea. Being placed at a disadvantage doesn’t mean a competitor lacks the ability to win. Sometimes the opponent is simply presented as an even greater threat.

The difference is that WWE can decide when the challenger finally succeeds. Andy Reid and his players had to produce the result themselves.

The best underdogs have something the favorite cannot ignore

A wrestling storyline becomes less convincing when the challenger has no credible route to victory.

A performer can lose repeatedly and still remain popular, but the audience needs to see some quality that makes a future breakthrough plausible. Perhaps the wrestler has superior technical skills, can withstand unusual punishment or has previously come close to defeating the champion.

Consider how WWE presented Sami Zayn during his rivalry with Roman Reigns and The Bloodline in 2023.

Reigns had an extraordinary championship reign behind him. Zayn’s challenge at Elimination Chamber in Montreal drew much of its emotional power from his relationship with The Bloodline, his eventual rejection of Reigns and the possibility of a major victory in front of his hometown audience.

Zayn lost the match. The reaction to the storyline nevertheless demonstrated how effectively wrestling can make an underdog compelling without requiring a championship victory at every opportunity.

Competitive sports have their own version of that credibility.

Sports Illustrated’s NBA findings placed Boston first among basketball underdogs, with 92 victories from 214 games, a 43% win rate. Miami followed with 156 wins from 402 opportunities, or 38.8%.

Both franchises enjoyed considerable success during the decade, yet regularly encountered matchups in which another team was favored.

TalkBasket examined what makes an NBA team a dangerous underdog, focusing on the qualities that helped Boston and Miami remain competitive against stronger opponents. Experienced coaching, defensive versatility and players capable of creating difficult shots all offered ways to challenge an expected favorite.

Those characteristics are easy to recognize in wrestling terms. A challenger doesn’t need to be stronger in every department. The audience only needs to believe that the wrestler possesses enough advantages to exploit an opportunity.

There is also an important difference between a believable underdog and an automatic winner.

Boston still lost most of the games in which it was listed as an outsider. Miami did too. Their records demonstrate that established teams can remain dangerous against superior opposition without guaranteeing that an upset will follow.

Wrestling uses that uncertainty as part of its storytelling. A challenger might get close enough to win, only for the champion to escape at the last moment. The near-miss can become another chapter in the rivalry.

When the finish isn’t decided backstage

The comparison becomes more complicated when professional wrestling is placed alongside mixed martial arts.

WWE and UFC share a substantial audience. Both rely on recognizable personalities, rivalries, championship stakes and promotional events designed to make fans care about a confrontation.

The competitive foundations are very different.

A WWE match is a performance with a planned finish. UFC fighters enter a genuine contest in which the result depends on what happens inside the cage.

Yet MMA promotion regularly borrows elements that wrestling fans would recognize. A challenger might be portrayed as overlooked, a champion as unbeatable, or a rivalry as a personal dispute that can only be settled through confrontation.

The difference becomes obvious once the fight begins.

An underdog can end a contest with a knockout or submission regardless of how convincing the favorite looked during the build-up. A highly regarded striker can struggle against an opponent’s wrestling. A fighter who appears to be winning can lose after one mistake on the ground.

Unlike professional wrestling, the promotion cannot guarantee that the expected star leaves with the championship.

Betting markets reflect that uncertainty, with UFC events offering markets covering the outright winner, method of victory and number of rounds. Availability also depends on jurisdiction. Sports Illustrated’s betting coverage, for instance, includes a guide to the fanatics sportsbook bonus code, which discusses UFC betting promotions such as split-decision insurance alongside the operator’s eligibility requirements.

For MMA audiences, the possibility of an unexpected finish is part of the attraction. A fighter can dominate the opening rounds and still lose. A challenger can arrive with a modest record and discover a weakness that changes the entire contest.

Wrestling recreates much of that suspense through performance, character work and the careful timing of major moments.

The audience’s investment can be remarkably similar even when the nature of the contest is not.

Why an underdog victory needs the right opponent

An upset only carries weight when the favorite has been established as someone worth defeating.

WWE has repeatedly demonstrated this through long championship reigns. Roman Reigns’ run as Undisputed WWE Universal Champion created a succession of challengers, each approaching the same problem from a different direction.

Cody Rhodes eventually completed his story by defeating Reigns at WrestleMania XL in 2024. The victory carried the weight of everything that had happened before it, including Rhodes’ unsuccessful challenge the previous year.

Had Reigns been presented as an ordinary champion who lost regularly, Rhodes’ eventual victory would have meant something very different.

There is a parallel in competitive sport. Beating a championship contender attracts more attention than defeating a struggling opponent, even though both count as a single victory in the standings.

Sports Illustrated’s research adds an unusual dimension to that observation. Kansas City was successful enough to become a formidable favorite in most circumstances, yet still produced an exceptional record on the occasions when another team was expected to beat it.

The Chiefs’ overall reputation and their status in individual matchups were two different things.

Professional wrestling frequently separates those ideas as well. A decorated champion can become vulnerable against a particular rival. A wrestler with a poor recent record can suddenly become dangerous because of the personal stakes involved in a match.

Wrestling promoters can construct those circumstances deliberately. Real sports produce them through schedules, injuries, rivalries, changing form and the strengths of individual opponents.

The audience doesn’t always need the underdog to win

One of the more interesting lessons from wrestling is that an unsuccessful challenger can sometimes become more popular after losing.

Zayn’s defeat to Reigns in Montreal did not erase the audience’s investment in him. Bryan’s setbacks before WrestleMania XXX helped build support for his eventual victory. Rhodes’ loss at WrestleMania 39 extended a championship story that concluded a year later.

The result matters, but the circumstances surrounding it can matter just as much.

That is harder to manufacture in competitive sport, where teams and athletes have no obligation to follow a satisfying narrative. A promising challenger might lose badly. A dominant champion might be defeated in an anticlimactic contest. An unexpected winner might never repeat the achievement.

Wrestling has the luxury of arranging the important moments.

Its real skill lies in making those moments feel earned.

Sports Illustrated’s decade of underdog results shows that the appeal of an unexpected victory is hardly limited to scripted entertainment. Kansas City, Boston and Miami all supplied genuine examples of teams overcoming unfavorable expectations, sometimes repeatedly.

Professional wrestling takes the same basic sporting experience and builds entire careers around it. The champion represents the obstacle, the challenger gives the audience someone to support, and everything leading up to the match is designed to make the outcome matter.

Daniel Bryan’s WrestleMania XXX victory remains memorable because of the months of frustration, opposition and near-misses that preceded it.

The audience knew professional wrestling was scripted.

They still wanted to see him win.