We don’t know what’s going to happen in the main event of WrestleMania 31, but win or lose, there’s one thing we know: Brock Lesnar has retired from UFC, signed a multi-year deal with WWE and will be sticking around. So what does that mean?
It either means Lesnar’s losing the championship at WrestleMania and being refocused as a regular hand in the company, or he’s winning and being champion forever. Who could beat him? Who SHOULD beat him? Nobody, if you think about it. He’s Brock Lesnar. That disqualifies most people from the conversation.
Regardless, Brock’s going to be around for a bit and needs to see some fresh feuds and faces. Since returning he’s only fought a handful of people, and it’s gotten even more exclusive since last summer. John Cena, and Seth Rollins as the third part of a triple threat. That’s it. On Sunday he adds Roman Reigns. But what’s next?
Here are the six feuds we want to see for Brock Lesnar in 2015, and beyond. Read our picks with “John Cena should stay the hell away from all of this” in the back of your head.
Daniel Bryan
This is the easy one. If you like to think of Internet Wrestling Fans as one person with one hive-mind opinion that can’t be altered or reasoned with, that person wants to see Daniel Bryan vs. Brock Lesnar.
The truth is that it’d just be a great match. It’s the best available David & Goliath story on a show that cherishes David & Goliath stories. Brock Lesnar has accomplished things that no other man in wrestling has: he’s sent The Rock to Hollywood, defeated The Undertaker at WrestleMania, knocked John Cena out of the main-event and won championships everywhere from the NCAA to New Japan to UFC. He’s an impossible person. He’s a giant, aggressive cartoon baby come to life. We can never, ever identify with him. He’s an attraction. Daniel Bryan, though? He’s our sized. Maybe smaller. He’s not in visibly fantastic shape. He looks like a goat, or a hobo. He’s increasingly fragile, and every time he falls down and grabs his neck you think his career’s over. But you know what? That motherf*cker can go, and he too has accomplished the unthinkable: he defeated Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista in the same night to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania. He finds the impossible in the mundane. He’s the polar opposite of Lesnar.
Plus, there’s a precedent for Lesnar working great matches with smaller opponents. His title match at No Way Out with Eddie Guerrero is legendary, and just this January he tore it up with Seth Rollins (and some other guy) at the Royal Rumble. Lesnar works best when allowed to feel “above” his opponent, because he’s so naturally cocky and unlikeable you might as well roll with it. Win or lose, Bryan vs. Lesnar is the kind of perfect alignment wrestling needs sometimes. Maybe just be gentle with his neck.
Seth Rollins
We know they’re great together, and there may be a Lesnar face turn on the horizon, so why not?
The Money in the Bank cash-in is something that can save the WrestleMania 31 main-event. The logical thing is for Roman Reigns to win after being destroyed and having Rollins cash in in the confetti, but what if you change it just a little? What if Lesnar ends up facing the fight of his life against a motivated, unstoppable Reigns, but his experience wins out? What if he survives this tornado of a dude only for the tornado’s weird, Crossfitter little brother to show up and steal it from him?
Rollins cashing in on Lesnar on the biggest show of the year at the worst possible moment could get every person in the WWE Universe behind Lesnar, and propel him through a summer of great matches. Plus, don’t you want to see The Authority throw Rollins under the bus when they realize Lesnar’s after them? Don’t you want to see Ambrose and Reigns just kinda standing in the background snickering?
Dean Ambrose
Nobody needs a story with a point and a refresh more than Dean Ambrose. Over the summer he became WWE’s hottest act, and a combination of non-stop losses and stupidity curbed him. Why is Ambrose beating people up with a hot dog cart? Why’s he trying to hit someone with a plugged-in television monitor? Why’s he rendered helpless by a spooky ghost lantern? Why’s he stealing a belt he didn’t win and being less crucial to a story than R-Truth?
Imagine a scenario wherein Roman Reigns wins the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania, and Lesnar is suddenly unhinged and out for revenge. Who is Roman’s only documented friend in WWE? His “brother,” Dean Ambrose. Ambrose running interference as Roman’s pal might seem demeaning, but that would vanish the second we saw him running at Lesnar with those crazy clubbering punches and flailing around.
This is the Lesnar hardcore match we need. Brock’s great in No-DQ situations, and an opponent of Brock’s stature and quality would allow Ambrose to elevate his work above the shifty WWE mid-card and really go all-out. Don’t you want to see that? Don’t you want to see the singles equivalent of The Shield’s epic TLC match? Ambrose getting F-5’d through set pieces and staggering up to his feet with his hands shaking is something that needs to happen.
Ryback
Who can stop Brock Lesnar? Maybe an ersatz Brock Lesnar?
Ryback has never had a sustained push that allowed him to be a functional, reliable member of the WWE roster. He’s a victim of WWE’s obsession with giving every new guy a monster push and having nothing but “new guy monster push” planned. They show up, beat everybody, get beaten in some anticlimactic way and that’s it. They die, or they live long enough to see themselves dance with Santino.
But what if WWE’s babyfaces realized they could use Ryback as a weapon? What if they need to unseat Brock Lesnar as champion by any means necessary and decide to find out what happens when you power Ryback up and run him full speed at the Beast Incarnate? What’s Lesnar going to do to a guy with a neck bigger than his? Has that ever happened before? Aren’t these guys just Brock Lesnars from different regions of the country?
I’m not saying it’d happen in a million years, but using Brock to elevate by proxy the people who actually need it would probably be a good idea.
Dolph Ziggler
Speaking of guys who need it, here’s Dolph Ziggler.
Dolph Ziggler was WWE’s hero once. Down 3-1 in a Survivor Series elimination match with careers on the line, Ziggler summoned the Stingerzord and gave it the fight of his life. Since then, he’s been forgotten. He’s the littlest guy on the ever-present Team Cena in throwaway Raw matches, or he’s Guy #4 in a 7-Guy Intercontinental Championship feud.
What if WWE let Ziggler be the hero again?
If nobody can beat Brock Lesnar and the WWE Universe desperately needs the championship on the show, maybe Ziggler could do the impossible again. Maybe he could fight a bigger fight than the fight of his life. And if he can’t? Hey, you get to see the best bumper in the company bump for the most dynamically strong guy in wrestling. Why have we not seen Ziggler sell a thousand F-5s already? Wouldn’t it be worth it just to see what he’d do when Lesnar ran through him with a clothesline?
CM Punk
Shut up.
A Lesnar/Xavier Woods feud will happen before this one, but revisiting The Beast Vs. The Best now that everything has changed would be incredible. Think about it. The first time they met, CM Punk loved pro wrestling more than anyone and was willing to put himself on the line and fight to the death to represent it. Lesnar was the entitled part-timer who’d sauntered back into wrestling from UFC and expected the world handed to him.
This time, the entire dynamic would change. Lesnar has accomplished all the things Punk wants to. He beat The Undertaker at WrestleMania. He decisively beat John Cena so bad Cena left him alone. He beat The Rock. He left wrestling to join UFC and became Heavyweight Champion. Now he’s holding on the WWE World Heavyweight Championship forever and nobody can beat him. He’s going to eclipse Punk’s “longest run of the modern era” if someone doesn’t step up to stop him. So shouldn’t that be Punk? Shouldn’t that be the man so driven by his need for validation? Shouldn’t he be compelled to defeat the man who accomplished all of Punk’s dreams without ever giving a shit?
I don’t know about you, but I’d watch the hell out of that.
And Lesnar/Xavier Woods would be pretty great, too. For different reasons.
