Welcome to another edition of WWE Heat Index, where one of the biggest stories from the past week is examined under a microscope and picked apart for analytical purposes.
This week, we saw logic somewhat thrown out the window when Roman Reigns—a man who had previously been granted carte blanche to announce himself as the new No. 1 contender to the Universal Championship—stripped of that right.
When it comes to changing things up to keep the audience on its toes, this is a good thing. It seemed like a guarantee that he would face Brock Lesnar or Samoa Joe in a singles match and now, that may not happen.
However, this is ridiculous in the sense that he was apparently given the freedom to declare this match in the first place, as it was officially announced by WWE on multiple occasions, yet that went out the window because he attacked someone who had done similar things to him.
The fallacy in a storytelling perspective is the same as it was with the rematch for the women’s Money in the Bank ladder match: if it has happened a million times in the past and nobody ever did anything about it, why is it suddenly a problem now, but only for this match, and it will be ignored for every other feud?
We know the real reason why they’re doing this is because they want to pull a bait and switch because surprises are something the wrestling industry thrives on and if something is announced ahead of time and then a different result comes out of it, people will be shocked and feel like they were more entertained.
WWE’s creative team must have felt like this was the best (or perhaps only) way to set up what seems to be a very obvious conclusion: a Fatal 4-Way match.
Yes, in theory, that shouldn’t happen as the No. 1 contender’s match on next week’s Monday Night Raw is between Samoa Joe and Roman Reigns, but Braun Strowman is looming in the background and will undoubtedly make an appearance.
Strowman has been teased before as far as wanting to clash with Brock Lesnar, so he already has an in for two of his opponents. The only one missing adversarial element is Samoa Joe, but do you think WWE is going to really care to set that up much more than “he’s also an opponent and they both want to win the match” or an easy equivalent to that?
For some reason, WWE seems hell-bent on redoing Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns for WrestleMania 34, proving they haven’t learned any lessons from the past few years.
Fans weren’t cheering Reigns over Lesnar two years ago and hated the idea of those two fighting, which made them have to do a mercy switch with Seth Rollins winning the title just to make sure WrestleMania 31 didn’t end in a chorus of boos.
The next year, Roman Reigns defeated Triple H in the main event and, lo and behold, WrestleMania 32 ended in a chorus of boos. Then, he defeated The Undertaker, and WrestleMania 33 ended in a bunch of boos before everyone agreed it was more important to thank The Phenom.
WrestleMania 34 absolutely will not end in anything other than boos if we have Reigns vs. Lesnar again, but out of stubbornness or some kind of love for self-sabotage, WWE may likely go that route, which will cause so many problems in the long run.
We can talk about how the Universal Championship is so rarely seen that it hurts the storytelling of the Raw brand as well as the title, but that clearly didn’t matter enough for WWE not to go with the Goldberg and Lesnar plan earlier in the year.
We can also talk about how throwing all three opponents in this one match with Lesnar hurts the “hasn’t been done before” feel for any of those challengers in the future as far as matches with the Universal Champion goes.
Ask yourself if you’re going to care as much about seeing Strowman vs. Lesnar at Survivor Series if they’ve already fought at SummerSlam, or if you’re going to want to see Reigns go up against Lesnar another time after they’ve done it twice by that point.
And yes, this will be a Fatal 4-Way, because the way things are panning out, that’s the only way WWE checks off all the boxes.
Samoa Joe had too positive of a reception for his Great Balls of Fire feud with Lesnar just to be ignored and they’ve set up no alternative opponents for him for SummerSlam. Roman Reigns has claimed ownership of the title shot already and won’t be downgraded in his spot because he’s Roman Reigns. Likewise, Braun Strowman has made too big of a splash to just sit out the event and he, too, has had no other opponents lined up.
This will end with Strowman interfering to cause the match to be thrown out and a Fatal 4-Way to be announced either immediately afterwards or the following week on Raw, as they may want this next edition to end with total chaos that will be addressed at a later time, just to drag it out.
Then, with Fatal 4-Ways being the way they are, there are several more options for how to book the finish of the match to benefit whomever WWE wants to look the strongest.
One example is for Reigns to hit a spear on Joe or Strowman and for Lesnar to capitalise by stealing the pin from The Big Dog. This would be done if the story being told is that Reigns would have won had something not screwed him over.
Another would be for Reigns to take the pinfall loss and to have to fight his way back into earning a title shot against Lesnar, which of course would work if he were a babyface the crowd actually cheered for, but ignorance to those boos hasn’t stopped WWE from booking him in those positions in the past, so why should it be ruled out now?
So why is this happening? Is it because the brand split has caused the big four pay-per-views to be overloaded and WWE has no ability to cram everybody on the card without making matches multi-man fights, or is it because the writers haven’t figured out any alternatives?
Admittedly, on paper, it’s an amazing sounding match. These are four of the biggest physical threats in the entire company and it could make for an amazing segment.
However, the way WWE goes about telling this story and how they take things in the future could be extremely rocky roads to traverse and since the company has had many faults this year with few major successes, far be it from me to have optimism that the next nine months won’t be frustrating to sit through.
Do you think we’ll see anything other than a Fatal 4-Way? Are you excited for that possibility? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below!
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