Brock Lesnar’s return to WWE Tuesday night, and subsequent challenge for the WWE championship against Kofi Kingston next month, wasn’t a total surprise. We knew WWE would blow out their return to Friday nights, when Smackdown shifts from USA Network to FOX.
What is stunning though, is realizing just how few matches Lesnar has wrestled on television since he returned to WWE in 2012. Which is a grand total of zero.
Slight #SDLive spoiler below, but the note is incredible.
Oct. 4 will be Brock Lesnar's first match on WWE TV in 15 years and 7 months (03/02/04).
— Adam Silverstein (@SilversteinAdam) September 18, 2019
The last time Lesnar wrestled on television was 10 days before his WrestleMania XX curtain call, when he squashed Hardcore Holly in an opening match on Smackdown. Lesnar would go on to have a snoozer against Goldberg before guest referee ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin stunned both opponents and had a few celebratory beers.
That means Lesnar has had a whopping four WWE title reigns without wrestling a single match on Raw or Smackdown. Considering Seth Rollins wrestled longer in one night than Lesnar had since winning the Universal title in 2017, I guess this shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise.
Should Lesnar win the belt when he squares off against Kingston on October 4, it’ll be interesting to see how he’s used. While he’s primarily wrestled main evented pay-per-views since his return to WWE, it wouldn’t be a stunner to see him wrestle the occasional Smackdown main event considering FOX is paying massive money to air WWE’s weekly show.
