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What’s Next For Brock Lesnar? Here Are 5 Potential Opponents For ‘The Beast’ Upon His WWE Return

By Aaron Sass
Published on: 14:37 PST, Aug 22, 2016

Last night’s WWE SummerSlam show ended in brutal fashion, as Brock Lesnar defeated Randy Orton via TKO, in what was an absolute bloody mess. Typically in WWE, we don’t see blood anymore, unless it’s an accident. But, it appears that the company has made a special exception for Brock Lesnar because there seems to be blood in almost every single one of his matches.

Prior to Sunday’s event, there were rumors going around that Bill Goldberg was going to make his return during the Orton vs. Lesnar match, but that didn’t end up happening. Instead, Lesnar was confronted by SmackDown commissioner Shane McMahon at the end of the show, and the show went off the air after Lesnar laid Shane out with an F-5.

It appears that Brock Lesnar won’t be returning to WWE until next year, as he’s typically part of the Royal Rumble pay-per-view. Will he be in the Rumble? He could be, but he usually isn’t, and if he ends up having a singles match at WWE’s January show, here are five possible opponents for the former WWE and UFC Heavyweight Champion.

Shane McMahon

As previously mentioned, Brock Lesnar laid out Shane McMahon right before SummerSlam went off the air. Will that lead to a match between the two? Probably not, but it could.

Shane McMahon is obviously still capable of getting in the ring, and, as we saw at WrestleMania 32, he’s still not afraid to take major risks. But would he be willing to take multiple German Suplexes, and bleed all over the place in a main-event match with Brock Lesnar? He probably would. But, would WWE allow it to happen. Who knows?

As noted in the intro, there was a rumor that Bill Goldberg was going to confront Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, but he didn’t end up showing his face at the event. However, the plan may be for Shane McMahon to bring in Goldberg to face Lesnar at WrestleMania 33 next year.

Randy Orton

Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar wasn’t an all-time classic match, but it did have one of the most brutal conclusions in WWE history, and now the question is, will there be a rematch at some point?

For right now, Randy Orton is scheduled to begin a feud with Bray Wyatt on Tuesday night, but there’s no way that he, or WWE, can completely ignore what happened to him this past Sunday night. On the post-SummerSlam edition of Live Audio Wrestling, there was some speculation about a rematch between Lesnar and Orton taking place at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view. So, we could be seeing Orton vs. Lesnar 2 take place in January.

Braun Strowman

https://twitter.com/BraunStrowman/status/765520754246987776

This one is a bit of a stretch, but we do know that WWE’s original plan for SummerSlam was to have Brock Lesnar go one-on-one with Braun Strowman, which obviously was changed months in advance.

If you’ve been watching Raw on a weekly basis, then you can clearly see that WWE is building Strowman for something big in the next couple of months. But the question is, what? Will it be the long-rumored match with The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33? Or will it be a one on one match with Brock Lesnar at the Royal Rumble? It could end up being both. But we’ll have to wait until January to find out.

Roman Reigns

WWE has been wanting to do the Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar rematch ever since the first one took place nearly two years ago at WrestleMania 31. Of course, their plan was always for Reigns to be the guy to defeat Lesnar, but they were forced to change that plan due to the overwhelming negativity surrounding Reigns’ push at the time.

Fast forward almost two years later, and there is still a ton of negativity surrounding Reigns, which is why WWE, for a short period of time, took him out of the main event mix. But now, he’s back in the main event scene, and he may end up defending the Universal Championship – if he wins it before then – against Brock Lesnar in January.

Chris Jericho

As you can see above, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has reported that there was a heated backstage altercation between Chris Jericho and Brock Lesnar following the SumemrSlam main event. Basically, what happened was, Jericho was unsure that the planned finish of the Lesnar vs. Orton match was what actually happened, and he was quite upset about it. Lesnar overheard Jericho’s displeasure, which led to a physical altercation between the two.

Over the years, WWE has taken real-life issues between two superstars and put them on television. Will they do the same with Jericho and Lesnar at some point? Probably. Both Jericho and Lesnar are on Raw, so the match can happen if WWE wants it to. Furthermore, Jericho and Lesnar have never faced each other in a one on one match, so it would definitely be a big deal if it were to happen.

[Image via WWE]

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