Lesnar Kept Strong Ahead of SummerSlam Match with Rollins

If Brock Lesnar isn’t a dominant heel, then what’s the point of having Brock Lesnar on your wrestling show?

Lesnar is a beast. He’s one of the guys on the roster where, if the average person came across him in a bar fight, would turn and run so fast in the other direction, there’d be cartoon smoke billowing from their feet like those old Roadrunner cartoons.

Lesnar was once again dominant on RAW last night as Universal Champion, taking out Seth Rollins during a match with Dolph Ziggler and then beating him up again after dragging him out of an ambulance. It was one of the more memorable segments on RAW in recent months, probably up there with the night Dave Bautista dragged an unconscious Ric Flair from the locker room to set up his match with Triple H at WrestleMania.

WWE fans will roll their eyes at Lesnar as champion … again. But truth is, he’s the best guy for the role. If he’s willing to appear on TV more, there’s no bigger star in the company than Lesnar. He has the most star quality to him, and he’s a heel. Oddly enough, a lot of that star power is because of what he did outside of WWE, including winning the UFC Heavyweight Championship.

We could talk about WWE’s lack of star building in recent years, but that’s a whole other column.

Seth Rollins has momentum and him chasing Lesnar for a Universal Title match at SummerSlam in two weeks makes a lot of sense. The beatdown on RAW Monday could suggest that they’re giving Seth a reason for not winning at SummerSlam, but I think it’s more to put sympathy on Rollins, and make his odds feel insurmountable heading into the championship match.

That makes Rollins beating Lesnar at SummerSlam even bigger.

That being said, there is an interesting dynamic with Paul Heyman now running RAW, as far as how WWE is handling its heels. In one segment, close to the end of the show, Lesnar came across as the dominant heel against Rollins. Meanwhile, Drew McIntyre and Samoa Joa had trouble handling themselves in a fair fight against Roman Reigns and Cedric Alexander in the very next segment.

Ultimately, I think Heyman has a long-term vision. He also didn’t take the RAW executive producer job without some guarantee of his power. He has butted heads with Vince McMahon before (twice), first as the head writer on SmackDown and then later as the head of the ECW revival in 2006.

read more: SummerSlam 2019 Matches and Results

Heyman has always told good stories, and he’s always had strong heels. From Sabu, to RVD to Justin Credible to Tommy Dreamer for a time, Heyman had strong ECW heels. Then with SmackDown, he cultivated Lesnar in his early days and when he was with ECW he was the force behind CM Punk (granted, he was a babyface).

If Heyman’s strategy is to keep Lesnar hyper strong as a heel, there’s a reason for it. The reason, my guess, is to make Seth Rollins look like an even bigger babyface when he ultimately defeats Lesnar for the title.

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