Last night at WWE Fastlane 2017, Goldberg was victorious in dethroning Kevin Owens to become the third man to hold the Universal Championship.
In some ways, fans should rejoice. After all, Goldberg is one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling history and if Owens was to lose that title, who better to beat him than someone with such an incredible record?
However, bubbling under the surface of this booking decision are some potentially major problems that will spawn out of Goldberg becoming champion.
To an extent, this is all theoretical and there is obviously a chance none of the things mentioned here will be the outline of what we look back on and chastise WWE for doing, but history has shown that in similar situations in the past, certain issues have come up from analogous choices.
Here’s hoping the future isn’t set and none of this comes to pass, but if it does, you had your warning.
#1 It could create plot holes
There was a time in WWE where a champion who lost his or her title didn’t automatically get an assumed shot to win it back.
Nowadays, this is referred to as “the rematch clause” which essentially is a built-in kayfabe explanation for why the previous champion doesn’t get sent to the back of the line each time they lose, but instead, they have a shot at redemption.
Of course, we all know this is primarily utilised because WWE wants to maximise how long each storyline can be dragged out to since the writers are scripting such an insane amount of content in an ongoing fashion rather than working on a few episodes for a seasonal arc and then taking a break.
Television shows end after a few seasons. WWE has been going on every single week for decades. If there are any ways to take shortcuts to stretch things out, you can’t blame the writers for at least trying, especially if it frequently results in things the fans want to see anyway.
However, this gets thrown out the window every now and then when the writing team either is forced to abandon a rematch due to an injury or a scheduling conflict, or they simply wish to go in a different direction. If two people trade the title back and forth, who wants to see them wrestle each other at every event for a year straight, right?
The problem with Goldberg as universal champion is that his status as a part-timer puts this in jeopardy not just once, but twice.
Is Kevin Owens going to get his proper rematch? It’s doubtful, considering it would have to happen on Monday Night Raw and WWE is probably not going to waste Goldberg on a match on television like that.
Even if it does happen, it will clearly not be a true competition and it will just be a 30-second squash repeat of what went down at Fastlane.
But what about when Goldberg loses the championship? Is he going to bow out and retire, or is he going to wrestle one more time in an attempt to win it back?
If he chooses to just give it up, did he really care about it, to begin with? If he loses it at Wrestlemania and then wrestles his last match at Payback, doesn’t that seem a bit underwhelming for his sendoff?
#2 Predictability
Anybody who has been watching wrestling for a long enough time knew exactly what was about to go down the second a match between Kevin Owens and Goldberg was announced.
One of the biggest complaints from WWE fans is that we all eventually reach a plateau where things stop being surprising because we’ve seen it all before and we know how the creative team tends to operate.
More often than not, we can see past the current setup and assume not just what is going to happen in the immediate future, but a few months down the line, and whenever that is proven true, our instincts are to scoff and say that it was bad because it was predictable.
This derision is sometimes baseless, as there are people who think surprises for the sheer sake of shock value would somehow be a better option than a predictable outcome just because they didn’t see it coming, even if it were a horrible decision. While it might not be you who is reading this right now, someone out there would have been happy if Bo Dallas somehow walked away with the championship just because they wouldn’t have seen it coming.
The problem with predictability, though, isn’t just in how it robs audiences of fun twists to turn our heads for that particular moment, it also puts a damper on everything to come.
What is more entertaining: finding out who the murderer is during a horror film when the big reveal happens or being told spoilers ahead of time so every moment where the enjoyment comes from the pleasure of being left in the dark is ruined as you know what is going to be told to you 90 minutes later?
If we know how the next few weeks of Raw are about to go down, we are going to be less inclined to watch the show, which means all of the other feuds which need us to tune in to be able to get invested in won’t have that audience getting behind them.
On the other hand, if Owens had retained, then we’d all be wondering how WWE would bounce back with Goldberg and the ratings for Raw would probably spike in curiosity. Now, you’ll be hearing a less enthusiastic viewer base who might skip the show because they’ll catch up with the video packages on the Wrestlemania pre-show.
#3 Goldberg and Brock Lesnar don’t need it
The idea of someone “needing” a championship is often talked about by wrestling pundits, this in some ways can be an overused go-to phrase. After all, nobody truly needs these props if the stories being told are good enough to captivate audiences without them.
That implies the idea that the props are fundamentally meaningless, though. They’re tools in which to help tell a story—McGuffins, essentially. One guy has it, the other guy wants it, and that is why they are fighting.
If that’s the case, why are Goldberg and Brock Lesnar fighting for the title at Wrestlemania when their match was already announced weeks ago?
From Lesnar’s perspective, he is looking for redemption. He wants to fight Goldberg because that is his toughest opponent he’s never been able to conquer. From Goldberg’s point of view, he’s already beaten Lesnar once in the distant past, he destroyed him recently at Survivor Series and he eliminated him in the Royal Rumble.
Also read: WWE News: Goldberg cuts his first promo as Universal Champion
What does he care? More importantly, why should he grant this loser Brock Lesnar a shot at his shiny new championship title?
The exact same match could have happened at Wrestlemania but without the title in the mix and it still would have sold itself to the audience. This wasn’t a factor needed to boost its appeal to the audience, nor does it change the dynamic of the match.
Speaking on the grounds of predictability, everyone assumes Lesnar will be victorious and now that the title is on the line, it seems to cement this even more, as Goldberg will not be sticking around longer than Lesnar in the grand scheme of things.
If that’s the plan, then great job, WWE, as you just spoiled the ending to the few people left who didn’t already guess how this was going to turn out beforehand.
Goldberg is a legend who was worthy of the WWE Hall of Fame before he even stepped foot in the company over a decade ago. Another title win wasn’t needed to boost his credibility, nor is that something Lesnar needs at this point, either.
All this is doing is taking the title away from other people who could be using it to give their careers the extra juice they might need.
#4 It implied a hierarchy gap
For months, Kevin Owens has been the top dog on Monday Night Raw. As the major champion of the roster, he was the brand ambassador and the pinnacle for which to strive for.
With Goldberg shutting him out in under 30 seconds, this gives off the idea that the two of them are in completely different leagues. We don’t even see an over-protected guy like Roman Reigns beat someone as lowly as Epico and Primo this quickly.
By that rationale, this means the worst jobber on the roster is closer to the skill level of Kevin Owens than Owens is to Goldberg. Either Goldberg is that astronomically better, or he’s at least viewed that way in the eyes of the creative team.
The latter part is what is more definitively true. The only reason Goldberg is the champion right now is because he’s a big enough name that the company felt he is the bigger star and he takes priority over everybody else, including the guy who not only has lorded over everyone else but also kept your show running for the past several months.
This produces a lower morale as it reinforces the idea to the talent pool that they could be the most important workhorses who handle the responsibilities of the everyday strength of the product, but at the biggest show of the year—the goal they’ve been shooting for—they can be cast aside in favor of someone who sweeps in to steal it.
The Rock has gotten criticism for taking up spots from other people when he was featured in the main event several years in a row. Brock Lesnar has drawn the same fire. Now, it’s Goldberg’s turn.
Even fans of Goldberg can potentially turn on him now if they are passionate about this and would have preferred Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho to be for the Universal Championship, which easily could have happened. Those same fans could be chanting for Lesnar at Wrestlemania because he’s at least a more regular star than Goldberg is, and then your main event is hijacked by bitter smarks.
Worse, you’ve now just told those guys like Owens that they aren’t good enough, but once the part-timers leave after Wrestlemania, you’ll be crawling back to them in the hopes they’ll take on the responsibility all over again.
You just spit in their faces. What do you do if they say no? Can you blame them for being less than enthusiastic to break their backs for the next 11 months until you pull the rug out from under them again at Wrestlemania 34?
#5 It holds the title hostage
Those part-timers aren’t going to be there to help keep the lights on during the times where they’re on a leave of absence (hence why they are “part-timers”) and if you put a championship on any of them, that title just fades away.
While WWE usually adheres to the rematch clause story element more often than not, another one is the 30-day mandatory title defence stipulation. Every champion theoretically needs to defend his or her belt every month or it will be taken away from them for dodging competition.
If injured stars are forced to give up their titles well before those 30 days are up, why do part-timers get an exemption?
Once again, we know that there is no storyline reason for this, but a writer’s omission we’re supposed to ignore so they don’t have to pay a guy to make more appearances, but that doesn’t excuse it—particularly as this is entirely avoidable when you’re calling the shots of who wins and who loses!
Goldberg will be within the 30 days when he fights at Wrestlemania but assuming he drops the belt to Brock Lesnar, what happens after that?
History has shown that we won’t see the Universal Championship again until Summerslam, which is August 20th. Do you really want to see Raw without a world champion for the entirety of April, May, June, July and most of August?
It wasn’t necessary to put Goldberg in a match with Owens, as that was only done to give Goldberg the title. I hope the image of seeing him with the strap for the next 4 weeks is worth it, as the transition from Goldberg to Lesnar is going to kill Raw’s roster for the next five months to follow.
And if you’re thinking you’d rather not see the ugly red belt during that time anyway, then WWE has already failed in establishing any importance to the championship, which means giving it to Goldberg meant nothing, to begin with.
On paper, it will look good in the future to say that Goldberg and Lesnar are former universal champions, but if the product during that time is a sheer absence of that same title, nobody will associate that with anything good and it will be as pointless as saying William Regal is a 5x hardcore champion. So what? That’s the same belt Pete Gas and one of The Godfather’s hos won, and Raven held it 27 times.
By the end of 2017, the infancy of the Universal Championship will have a legacy of the first champion relinquishing it 24 hours later, Kevin Owens being squashed by Goldberg who lost it to Lesnar who disappeared for half the year. God forbid he drops it to Roman Reigns, as by that point, it will be cursed in the eyes of the fans.
Now that Goldberg has the championship, it’s too late to undo some of this, but there’s still time for WWE to course correct to avoid a few of these problems. All we have to do now is hope that’s what’s in store because if the company falls victim to these issues, it’s going to be a rough year.
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