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| This match had the wrong finish and it had everything to do with WWE's errors in long-term planning Photo Credit: WWE.com |
WWE's main perceived weakness is that the booking is too flighty. Plans change too much week to week, and the lack of overall direction causes the company to give away big matches at inexplicable times or run with repetitive builds to what should be money matches. Yet the feeling after the duo of matches last night was that WWE missed a huge opportunity not strapping Braun Strowman. I'd be lying if I said I'd rather see Lesnar at the top of the RAW roster than the Monster Among Men. Strowman is the dude, and I think WWE waiting to put him on a pedestal and running stories through him is time the company is just squandering.
The problem is that looking through the company through that lens is dangerous, because WWE doesn't book to me and to other critics within the bubble. I'm okay with that, even if I'm not entirely sure what audience WWE is trying to cater to. However, the key to seeing what worth officials see in staying the course for Reigns/Lesnar II is all in two things — Lesnar's contract and reactions that Reigns gets. Both are obvious, to be honest. Lesnar is probably not coming back after his latest deal is up at WrestleMania, so of course one would want to make his final act of putting someone outside of the already-established crowd over. WWE really doesn't care whether you as a fan cheers or boos Reigns as long as you react to him, and putting him at the forefront makes sense no matter what one thinks about how corny he is (hint: he's real fuckin' corny) or whether he's a good traditional face or not (hint: he's not, but really who cares).
So everyone should be okay with reprising one of the three best WrestleMania main event matches ever, right and telegraphing it so that the build really gets hammered home. The crowd in New Orleans should be hot, the match will be great, and Lesnar will go out putting over someone who debuted after the company got the F out. So what's the problem? Why does it feel like this match could be better, that it comes with a dose of existential dread? It's because WWE has a better match in store that involves one of these guys and someone newer and fresher. If you think the one being replaced here is Reigns, you've got another thing coming.
The problem is, and has always been, Brock Lesnar.
Lesnar's primacy has felt artificial for awhile now. One could pinpoint the fall back to WrestleMania XXXI when he lost the title without being involved in the pin, but honestly, it was a year later that his routine got tiring. I'm not saying Dean Ambrose should've beaten him. However, it was a fucking hardcore match. Would it have killed Lesnar to take at least one table bump or absorb one shot from a weapon? After that, the sheen came off the rose. Even if his matches were good (at least the WrestleMania match vs. Goldberg was good, very good), they hit a rote formula that felt samey even by WWE standards. It didn't help that Paul Heyman would come out and cut the same promo over and over for him. It would be one thing if he was worth the time, but numbers keeps showing that he's not necessarily something that rejuvenates WWE's bottom line commensurate with his salary.
Meanwhile, Lesnar clogging up the main event becomes emblematic of WWE's reliance on part-time talent to act as centerpieces for the big events, despite the fact that during both boom periods, WrestleMania main events were always big matches between top full-time stars. Nothing reinforces that your roster means nothing when most of if gets precluded from the most important matches at WrestleMania in favor of guys like The Rock, Bill Goldberg, Undertaker, Triple H, and Lesnar.
Meanwhile, the hottest feud in the company, by far, over the last year has been Reigns vs. Strowman. It is a feud more worthy of a WrestleMania main event than any other the company has run, and maybe more than any other the company has the potential to run outside of maybe, maybe Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa1. One might say that well was plumbed completely dry over the past year when they wrestled each other on seemingly every RAW brand pay-per-view, but at the same time, each match was a goddamn banger, and it was left off at a point that didn't completely resolve their issue. Hell, it doesn't take much to reignite a feud that hot anyway. Just take a look at how many times the John Cena/CM Punk feud kept sparking back up between the Pipe Bomb and when Punk left WWE.
Cena vs. Punk was another match that could and absolutely should have headlined a WrestleMania. However, WWE's slavish devotion to wrestlers who only show up for big shows prevented that from happening. WWE made the mistake of announcing the main event of WrestleMania XXVIII the night after XXVII, and then it doubled down by putting Rock over Cena, necessitating that they do it again a year later. The company didn't leave room for the possibility that someone could rise up and take primacy over the dude whose first job was making movies. That was one of the big reasons why Punk just up and left after the 2014 Royal Rumble. Wrestlers work hard every day of the year so that maybe they can get some of the biggest rewards. For most, hard work is not nor will it ever be enough, but for people like Punk, who spark the biggest fires organically, that carrot should always be in reach. The fact that it wasn't should have raised the biggest red flag.
Strowman is a special kind of talent where he could stay prominent underneath a Mania main event feud, but at this point, or at least until the finish of last night's main event, he was at critical mass. Wrestling promotion is about finding the curious balance between telling a long-term story with overarching vision and striking when irons are hot. It's funny how WWE rarely ever does the latter, and it only seems to do the former when it comes to people working with part-timers. That model is unsustainable, and I don't see how anyone can defend it as not being such. If you can't build hot matches with your full-timers, get out of promotion.
Of course, telling WWE to get out of promotion is like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a Dixie cup, and by the time you can effectively let it know where it went wrong, it'll be too late. WWE should take an opportunity for self-reflection and see that it needs to do a better job of big picture planning and not just trying to attract casual fans to Mania for dudes they remember from their days as fans. It's about using those part-time guys to supplement a vibrant roster that can stand on its own in hopes of keeping those fans around for the new hotness, or more accurately, to attract new lifelong fans. Reigns/Strowman does that. Reigns/Lesnar II? It remains to be seen.
1 - Why not Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn? I love that feud, but WWE did minimal work. The creative team expected everyone to either know the history beforehand or just nod and smile when the segments just told them of the wars they underwent on the indies, excuse me, sorry, "around the world." Fans have seen the Gargano/Ciampa story unfold from beginning to climax with presumably more chapters left to tell, pending the health of Ciampa's knee.