"Mankind has achieved his dream, and the dream of everyone whose been told, you can't do it!"
— Michael Cole, on the night Mick Foley won the WWF Championship.
- This is the main format of a standard wrestling match. The face starts out strong but is quickly taken over by the heel, is beaten up and worn down to when the crowd is sure they're done...until they manage to come back and pull off the win.
- Trish Stratus embodied this trope as she was hired by WWE with no wrestling ability and appalling mic skills. Over the years she trained and became one of the most accomplished and talented wrestlers in the company. She was rewarded with a retirement match in her hometown of Toronto against long time rival Lita with the Women's title on the line. She ended the match by making Lita tap out to the Sharpshooter and was given a standing ovation from the crowd as well as the staff at ringside.
- Jeff Hardy also embodied this trope during the second half of 2008. He fought countless times for the WWE title against Triple H; he always came close to beating him, but was never able to. In a promo, Triple H even tried to undermine Hardy's self-esteem by claiming that he'd never win a world title, and that they're in different leagues. To add insult to the injury, Edge took Hardy's place at Survivor Series, winning the WWE championship. However, at the next PPV, Armaggedon, Jeff Hardy defeated both Edge and Triple H in a Triple Threat Match to become WWE champion for the first and, so far, only time.
- This happened to, believe it or not, Zack Ryder. He started off 2011 as just a perennial lower card jobber, but quickly gained popularity through his Z! True Long Island Story web show. As the year progressed, he started to pick up steam and became a contender for the United States Championship, even gaining the support of John Cenanote . The culmination came at Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, when Ryder defeated Dolph Ziggler (the current US Champion) to finally capture his first singles title in WWE. Not bad for an Internet sensation.
- Invoked by The Undertaker during his feud with Shawn Michaels in 2009-2010:Sometimes it is Hell trying to get to Heaven.
- Generally the case for WrestleMania main events, usually involving a face wrestler finally achieving his dream in front of a grand stage. Look no further than Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania 12, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania 14 and John Cena and Batista at WrestleMania 21 for some notable examples.
- After months of getting screwed over by the Authority, Daniel Bryan finally won the title back at Wrestlemania 30, first by beating Triple H, then by going over Randy Orton and Batista in a triple threat match in the main event that night. He wrestled for nearly a full hour along the way.
- Matt Hardy after a heartbreaking betrayal in his personal life kicked off a decade of shaky backstage relationships, creative frustrations, multiple failed rebirthssee and falls off the wagonsee, and even reaching the ultimate low of faking a thinly veiled suicide note to test his fandom, which was finally enough to piss off his friends into setting him straight; Matt has gradually picked himself back up over the past few years. Apologizing to wrestling fans in some companies and reinventing himself as an iconic heel to them in others, he has turned his life around for the most part, earned back most of the respect he'd lost in his downfall, and become a husband to Reby Sky, father to their son Maxel, and Matt finally became TNA World Heavyweight Champion
at Bound for Glory 2015. - After being betrayed by fellow Shield member Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose spent the next two years seeking revenge on Rollins and fighting The Authority whilst also chasing after the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, only to be screwed at every opportunity by either outside intereference, reversed decisions, or generally coming up just short in his pursuits. Then, at Money in the Bank 2016, with the Authority having given up power and no longer terrorizing the roster, Ambrose won the Money in the Bank briefcase and finally avenged Rollins' betrayal by cashing in said briefcase after Rollins had just defeated Roman Reigns to win his first World Heavyweight Championship.
- Jake Roberts embodies this trope in real life. Having gone through the majority of his life on drugs and an estranged relationship with his family he was well on his way to becoming a wrestling tragedy. Till he sought help from DDP's yoga program and it helped him not only kick his drug habit but got back into the good graces with his family.
- Becky Lynch started 2018 absolutely languishing at the bottom of the Women's Division, slogging through pointless filler matches with other similarly underused wrestlers and never receiving a noticeable push in spite of being a former champion with seemingly invincible popularity with the fanbase until the triple-threat match for the Smackdown Women's Championship at SummerSlam 2018 and the following Face–Heel Turn to Charlotte Flair. What followed was a series of events that cemented Becky as the top woman of the entire WWE, including winning the Smackdown title at Hell in a Cell 2018, the Last Woman Standing match at Evolution, and the go-home Raw episode for Survivor Series 2018 with the broken face.
Enter 2019, she's literally at the highest point of her entire career, with a new, cooler Anti-Hero persona, and more over than ever, a second title reign come and gone, and - most importantly - the hard-won respect and faith of the company and even Vince McMahon himself. Becky's unprecedentedly meteoric rocket-jump to the top of the company can really best be summed up by the fact that, on the New Year's special of SmackDown, she not only had the chance to wrestle a mixed tag match alongside John Cena — actually a noted and long-term supporter of Becky's out of character — but was categorically put over by Big Match John not just as a trusted future prospect, but as Cena's potential successor as the face of the company. It even started looking more and more likely that she, Ronda Rousey, and Charlotte Flair would main-event WrestleMania 35, to the point where Becky was openly saying this and taking the credit for it on WWE programming as the face in the angle. Not long after, the Rousey–Flair–Lynch match was indeed announced as the WM 35 main event—and more importantly, Becky won, becoming a double champion and ending Rousey's yearlong unbeaten run. - Cody Rhodes returned to the WWE at WrestleMania 38 with a singular goal — to do what his late father, "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, has never been able to accomplish: win the WWE Championship. After winning the 2023 Royal Rumble, Cody would go on to challenge the longest-reigning Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 39, where he would sadly come up short following interference from The Bloodline. A year later, he would be granted a second chance by winning the 2024 Royal Rumble and immediately challenging Roman at WrestleMania once more. However, Cody would gain a new enemy in The Rock when he sabotages the Brahma Bull's plans to face his cousin for the Universal Title at WrestleMania XL instead. In the weeks leading up to WM XL, Cody would find himself ambushed, beaten violently, and bloodied by an even stronger Bloodline lead by Roman and the self-proclaimed "Final Boss" The Rock; but along with former Bloodline member Jey Uso helping him out, he would also gain an unexpected ally: his former Arch-Enemy Seth "Freakin'" Rollins. Together, they would accept Reigns and Rock's challenge for a tag team match at WM XL to determine the stipulation for Cody vs. Roman the following night.note Despite their efforts, Cody and Seth would lose the tag match, thus making Sunday's main event title match held under Bloodline rules, favoring Roman entirely. As the match proceeded, all hope seemed lost for Cody as The Bloodline constantly interfered… until Roman's and The Rock's past enemies, lead by Jey, would come to aid Cody and clear the ring. Roman's final downfall would be after he chose to strike his former Shield teammate Seth Rollins in the back with a steel chair (as the latter did to him a decade ago) instead of striking Cody, which gave the "American Nightmare" an opening to defeat Roman with three consecutive Cross Rhodes, thus finally ending the Tribal Chief's historic 1316-day title reign and attaining what was the unreachable goal for the Rhodes family.
