WWE’s Failure With Brock Lesnar As Champion

When Brock Lesnar defeated John Cena to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship back at SummerSlam in August, WWE fans wondered just how long Lesnar’s title reign would last, and if it turned out to be a lengthy reign, just how many times he’d appear on TV and wrestle on pay-per-views.

As of right now Lesnar is advertised and scheduled to make his return to WWE television on December 8, which will be just about 3 months after his last appearance when he defended the WWE World Heavyweight Championship back at Night of Champions on September 21.

Paul Heyman, who is Lesnar’s advocate on television and friend in real life, said that having a part-time champion like Brock Lesnar would restore prestige to the WWE Championship, and that the title doesn’t need to be defended on every single pay-per-view. While I agree with that, I’m baffled at how WWE is, for the most part, letting the fans forget who the WWE Champion is.

Put it like this – since Daniel Bryan surrendered his WWE Championship due to an injury, there’s been almost no mention of him on television. This is a guy who was one of, if not the most popular guy in the company leading up to his title win at WrestleMania 30.

Same thing goes for Lesnar. Since he’s won the title, and aside from the past two weeks, there’s been almost no mention of him. Not by John Cena, not by Randy Orton, not by Seth Rollins, not by Triple H, not by anyone.

Here’s where WWE failed. The plan for some time now is to have Roman Reigns win the Royal Rumble and go on to the main-event of WrestleMania 31 to face and defeat Brock Lesnar for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

Since WWE knew what Brock’s contract situation was, and since they knew that they either couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay him the money that he wanted to wrestle more than just a couple times a year, they should have taken a much different approach to Lesnar being WWE Champion.

Here’s what should have happened. Lesnar destroys Cena at SummerSlam, then Cena is hesitant to face him again at Night of Champions but does anyway and gets destroyed again.

In the meantime, the heir-apparent to John Cena, Roman Reigns suffers an injury. Yes, I know you can’t predict the future like that, but in my scenario the Reigns injury would actually be a blessing in disguise.

While Reigns is out, and after Lesnar destroys John Cena twice in a row, Cena will still want to face Lesnar, but The Authority (Triple H and Stephanie McMahon) won’t let him because he’s been completely decimated and there’s no reason to have Cena get in there a third time with Lesnar.

While all of this is happening Dean Ambrose is busy with Seth Rollins, and Cena begins to work a short program with Randy Orton.

With Ambrose, Rollins, Cena, and Orton all preoccupied with each other, every other person on the roster who could be available for a title match with Lesnar backs out, and runs away from the opportunity because they saw what he did to Undertaker at WrestleMania 30 and because of what he was able to do to John Cena twice. This would explain Lesnar’s absence because there’s no reason for him to show up if no one wants to fight him.

At the Royal Rumble in January, Roman Reigns makes his return and wins the rumble match. At the RAW after the rumble, Reigns talks about how disgusted he’s been by all of his fellow WWE superstars, and proclaims that he’s going to be the one to get the title off of Lesnar, and at WrestleMania 31 he’ll do just that.

So WrestleMania 31 ends with Reigns living up to his word and defeating Brock Lesnar for the title in the main-event, freeing up Brock Lesnar to go back to the UFC if he chooses to.

As mentioned before, Lesnar will not be back on WWE television until December 8, and that will likely just to be to promote his match with whoever the winner is between Randy Orton and John Cena at the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view this Sunday. The winner of Cena and Orton probably won’t wrestle Lesnar until the Royal Rumble pay-per-view, which will take place on January 25.

I’m not of the opinion that WWE should have paid Lesnar the amount of money that he was demanding to wrestle more matches than his contract stated, but they should have booked it a lot better than they have been.

Yes, I could be in the minority with my opinion. But it’s just baffling to me that WWE, for the most part, hasn’t made an effort to put their WWE Champion at the forefront, even when he’s not there.

By the time Lesnar defends his title again, it’ll be 125 days since his previous title defense.