I’ve been highly critical of Brock Lesnar over the last 6 months or so, which in honesty hasn’t always been entirely his fault. WWE made the bizarre decision to have Lesnar win the Universal Title, a title he has only just recently defended for the first time since winning at the very start of April.
To put your head in the palms of your hands even more over the situation, since Brock became champion, the Raw ratings have been at the lowest in almost 20 years, in fact I think one episode of Raw was the second lowest of all time. The WWE writers can’t put 2 and 2 together and realise that the fans want to see title matches, and when a PPV main event is simply a number 1 contenders match, it doesn’t have the big attraction to draw viewers in. I know personally that without a main heavyweight title match at a pay per view, I don’t feel the sense of urgency to watch it as usual.
That’s not the only problem with Brock as champion, the other question is realistically who can match up with him in the ring? I personally wouldn’t buy Finn Balor being able to last against Brock, and the same goes for Wyatt, Rollins and Ambrose (you remember their Wrestlemania 32 match).
Then along came Samoa Joe. Despite another chapter in the poor writing of WWE leading to fans not knowing who was supposed to be the good guy and who was supposed to be the bad, they were entertained. When Joe put his hands on Heyman, it was intriguing, but nothing we hadn’t seen before, an opponent using Paul Heyman to send a message to ‘The Beast’ is part and parcel of a Brock Lesnar feud these days.
Similarly there was the usual ‘pull-apart’ angle that comes with a big guy v big guy feud.
Then came that moment a few weeks ago on Raw where Samoa Joe actually put Lesnar in a choke hold and kept him there. That drew many eyes onto the feud, which got fans to stand up and take notice. For once, Brock was under threat, clear threat.
Samoa Joe got the upper hand of Brock Lesnar, which let’s face it, is a rare occurrence that anyone can get one over on Lesnar.
Even going into the PPV, there were fans that had seen the usual short, generic Lesnar ‘match’ and you could write the outcome before either man had stepped in the ring.
This was different, however.
Joe really took it to Brock, and the match itself was one of the most enjoyable Brock Lesnar matches since his return a few years ago, it felt like a real competition.
There were suplexes, chokeholds, slams, kicks and grapples which all credit to both men, worked really well in the ring together.
The match went around 10 minutes, and afterwards, both men came out looking like superstars. Brock had retained and managed to claim victory despite the beating he’d clearly taken, and Samoa Joe in his first WWE title opportunity, had taken the champion to the limit.
Nobody was expecting a 30-minute back and forth fast paced matchup, this delivered exactly what it needed to, and in honesty has made me like Lesnar a whole lot more.
On Raw the following night Samoa Joe looked, acted and spoke like a superstar. His heat with Lesnar felt like real tension and hatred and made myself and I’m sure many other fans excited for another bout. I’ve not been excited to see Lesnar wrestle in years, which looks likely to be at SummerSlam.
I could almost excuse Lesnar for making monthly appearances as apposed to weekly like a champion should do, if all of his bouts were like the one he just had against Joe.
It looks likely Joe isn’t out of the title picture, which is great, and when you add Roman Reigns to the mix it makes for the prospect of a fascinating triple threat match at SummerSlam, and again, a much needed injection of excitement back to a title that has been absent on WWE television for a large part of its existence.
In summary, I’m really happy with the Joe/Lesnar match, it did everything I hoped from it, and in addition it restored my faith in Lesnar himself.
Going forward, it does look like we’ll see the continuation of Lesnar/Joe going forward and again possibly a fatal 4 way at SummerSlam involving Reigns and Braun Strowman, which a few months ago I’d have groaned at, but I think could work really well.
I’m actually optimistic for once that the WWE Universal Title picture can be entertaining and put on a show worth seeing.
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