7 Times Wrestling Promotions Were Held To Ransom

The prospect of Roman Reigns, Bobby Lashley or - shudder - both, main eventing against Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam is a Vince McMahon dream sequence, but it has nightmarish echoes of main event catastrophes past and present for the company.

Vince McMahon will get his wish of course - the company seems to exist as much to let him get his wretched ideas out of his system as it does furnish him with even greater fortunes from television rights - despite the fact that the last time Lashley closed a show winning a title and Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns main evented, crowds were moved to either sh*t on the scene entirely or simply leave early to beat the traffic.

The current situation is one of Vince's own doing. He's bottled taking the title off Lesnar so much it's a surprise he hasn't merchandised the end result as a company-sponsored craft beer, whilst Bobby and Roman's mammoth failings are faults mostly of creative calamities caused by McMahon's malfunctioning machine.

SummerSlam's potential headliner will see the entire company backed into a corner and shackled with real and kayfabe binds yet again, but it remains dependent on the whims of The Chairman himself if anybody can actually finally break out from the malaise. He's got around similar problems rather uniquely in the past, but the worrying question lingers if he even wants to anymore...

'The Beast' had perhaps his best night with Raw's Universal Title the day he got hold of it. His WrestleMania 33 victory over Bill Goldberg was a breathless tour-de-force, cycling through the few things both behemoths could do really really well before going home not that long before the two monstrous mercenaries did themselves.

It was weird, really. There was little to separate the Lesnar/Goldberg 2004 disasterpiece from the 2018 edition when examining the parts at play. Neither had plans to commit any further time to WWE before or after it, neither fancied doing anymore than was absolutely necessary and neither measured the expectations of their audience against their performance. And yet, the crowd were electric for a match that went half the time with half the offence. Perception is - or was, at the time - everything, and Big Bill and 'The Beast' were still perceived as megastars. Goldberg probably still is.

And that's where the current problem comes in. Lesnar isn't some furious and petulant talent who won't give Vince McMahon his belt back - he's a fortuitous negotiator who hasn't been asked to. Universal Champion Brock Lesnar isn't Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1998 picking and choosing his programmes - Vince McMahon's pointing the gun at his own head.