What if Matt Riddle was to challenge Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 35?

The Royal Rumble is behind us. Seth Rollins emerged victorious and we now know that WWE is lining him up to challenge Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 35. If WWE doesn’t go with the widely rumored first women’s ‘Mania main event featuring Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch, and possibly Charlotte Flair, and instead goes a more conservative route, then it’s fair to guess that Rollins-Lesnar will close the show.

WWE didn’t necessarily have to go this route, though. Rollins could have challenged Daniel Bryan in more of a purist’s dream match, or else someone already on the SmackDown brand like Samoa Joe or Mustafa Ali could have been placed in that position for a more aggressively experimental WrestleMania angle. That would have left Lesnar and the Universal title open.

Sure, someone like Rollins or Braun Strowman could have naturally enough transitioned to challenging the Beast Incarnate. But what if WWE had gone in a totally different direction with a fresh and legitimately shocking challenger.

What if Matt Riddle were challenging Lesnar?

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#5 Earning a title shot

Matt Riddle would need to get established quickly for casual fans.

One of the biggest obstacles to positioning Matt Riddle as a challenger to Brock Lesnar would be the credibility gap, particularly in the eyes of casual fans.

More hardcore wrestling fans may have followed Riddle’s work with smaller promotions and developed a respect for him, and moreover been impressed by initial work opposite Kassius Ohno. However, Riddle hasn’t yet gone so far as to even appear on main roster television, making him an unknown commodity to fans who only follow Raw and SmackDown.

As such, WWE would need to both in kayfabe and the eyes of its fans justify Riddle challenging the Universal Champion, and particularly at the biggest show of the year. The most efficient way to do that would be for him to earn the opportunity on TV, perhaps as an unannounced participant in a tournament, Fatal Fourway, or Elimination Chamber match (the Royal Rumble could have been another opportunity). Moreover, Riddle would need to win in convincing fashion, not appearing to luck his way into the spot, but rather using his knockout or submission skills to immediately establish him as a big-time threat.

#4 An MMA style build

WWE could capitalize on Riddle and Lesnar's MMA histories

One of Matt Riddle’s main sources of credibility is his successful career in MMA, including fighting as a star for UFC. Riddle always wanted to be a wrestler—and discussed on his recent visit to Edge and Christian’s podcast that he took up amateur wrestling and then MMA at first as inroads to sports entertainment. Nonetheless, his ring style is grounded in his MMA work, and even his look, including wrestling barefoot, are influenced by that history.

WWE would be wise to cash in on Riddle’s background and particularly sell him as someone who is a threat to Brock Lesnar because, like the Universal Champion, Riddle has fought for real and is capable of imposing significant damage on an opponent in startlingly real and violent fashion. We could see a more MMA style build to this kind of match, including vignettes of them training, and having the two go through the motions of a more traditional weigh-in in advance of their big match.

#3 A worked MMA style

Brock Lesnar and Matt Riddle have the experience to work an MMA style match convincingly.

Wrestling doesn’t necessarily have the best history when it comes to booking worked contests that go beyond the realm of wrestling. See the posedowns and arm wrestling matches that have been used to build programs, or bouts that have actually been contested under boxing rules. More often than not, these showdowns come off as contrived and awkward, in part because the talents executing the match aren’t naturally inclined to work that style.

Brock Lesnar and Matt Riddle would be uniquely qualified to carry forward with an MMA style fight, and both are seasoned enough in wrestling to be trusted to keep it work. To be fair, it probably wouldn’t play all that well for the whole match to look like an MMA encounter, as the style isn’t built to entertain a wrestling crowd unless it’s over very quickly. The guys could do a lot worse, though, than to approximate the style of Kurt Angle’s match with Samoa Joe from Impact Wrestling’s Lockdown 2008.

#2 The Finn Balor push

Matt Riddle headlining WrestleMania upon his main roster debut would be a push best compared to what WWE did with Finn Balor in 2016.

While it feels like a distant memory at this point, when Finn Balor first got called up to the WWE main roster, he enjoyed a push like hardly any other star before or since. He won his way into the semifinals of a tournament to crown the original Universal Champion and went on to cleanly defeat no lesser stars than Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins to win the title at SummerSlam.

If Matt Riddle were positioned to challenge Brock Lesnar, he would need an equally efficient push to make him credible in that spot. Moreover, if WWE did make the bold choice to feature him so prominently at WrestleMania right out of the chute, there’s a reason to believe that the company would be prepared to go all the way with him by actually having him beat Lesnar.

Riddle would make reasonable sense in this role. As much as he’s largely an unknown to casual fans, that means he also comes in without any WWE losses on his record, and thus could reasonably be pushed as a big deal without any past to make up for.

#1 A telling fan response

The way fans responded to Riddle--and how WWE reacted to that--would be very telling.

There have been times in WWE history when the top names were pretty organically linked to fan response. It’s a check and egg proposition whether fans loved top stars because they were pushed on top and whether they were pushed based on crowd reactions. Regardless, all-time greats like Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan, and Steve Austin were undeniably each the face of the company in their time and the guy most fans readily wanted in that role.

Things have changed. John Cena and Roman Reigns, in particular, faced severe backlash for the perception that they were pushed not because of, but in spite of at least the hardcore fans’ reactions to them.

If Matt Riddle got a rocket strapped to him and went straight from NXT to the top of the main roster, it would be telling if fans got behind him or completely rejected him in that role. Perhaps all the more so, it would be interesting to see how WWE reacted.