10 Big Money Matches WWE Needs To Make
The marquee fights still left on the table.
“When you sign to fight me it’s a celebration! You ring back home, you ring your wife, ‘baby, we done it! We’re rich baby! Break out the red panties!’”
At the UFC 194 press conference last year, MMA superstar Conor McGregor cut one of his classic Nature Boy promos claiming that every man there would drop everything to fight him - that the McGregor fight was the big money fight.
With Rousey and Lesnar off the table for the moment, McGregor is the UFC’s only golden goose. Well, WWE is in a similar predicament.
Having spent years relying on the part time ghosts of the past, they’ve spent the last few cycles failing to build Roman Reigns as the next Rock or Cena. The company has a surfeit of talent, doing fantastic work: but with so much focus wasted on Reigns in the last two years, none of the other full time main event performers have the spotlight necessary to make a big fight by name alone.
So what’s left? Batista’s 2014 return was ruined through their failure to read the market correctly. They slept on Undertaker vs. Sting for so long that the match-up died a death; on the other hand, Bray Wyatt vs. Undertaker could have been huge given the right build but, rushed to the ring with no build at all, became just another also-ran.
WWE can't keep leaving money on the table. Here are the last few big money fights left to them in the 2016/2017 season.
10. Goldberg Vs. Brock Lesnar
The current scuttlebutt (like gossip going back to lick up its own vomit) has WWE having reached an agreement with former WCW rainmaker Bill Goldberg to return for either a short run or a one-off engagement, to face off against the Beast Incarnate, Brock Lesnar, once more.
Anyone who knows the history here knows how easy this would be to screw up. Goldberg was booked in short, dynamic matches for the most part in WCW, capitalising on his wordless, menacing charisma and physical presence and a carefully cultivated fifteen month winning streak to create a genuine homegrown attraction.
Arriving in WWE in March 2003, he was booked to work long, back-and-forth WWE-style matches. Goldberg’s invincible aura, the thing that had pulled in all that money, wasn’t protected: it was as if WWE were determined to expose the weaknesses of the man who’d been their former rival’s biggest star.
When it came down to the big money match between Brock Lesnar and Goldberg at WrestleMania XX, the excitement was already diminished. It dropped through the floor once word got around that this was the last night in WWE for both men. The crowd in attendance at Madison Square Garden booed the lacklustre efforts of both performers and cheered when special guest referee ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin delivered stunners to the pair after the match.
Fast forward twelve or thirteen years, and Goldberg is still in great shape at forty-nine… but it’s cardio shape, noticeably leaner than in his intimidating heyday, and he hasn’t wrestled a match since that anti-climax with Lesnar in March 2004.
Lesnar himself, meanwhile, has been built up to be an unstoppable, sniggering monster since returning to WWE in 2012. The company’s usual shortsightedness has left one of their biggest names with no one left on the full time roster who can provide a credible opponent.
Will a fifty-year-old man with a fifteen-year-old rep as a killer fly with today’s crowd? They’d need to protect the living hell out of Goldberg to make him credible as an opponent for Lesnar. He had surgery on both his knees in early July, and might need a little time to bulk up. Then there’s that ring rust… but Goldberg was never about immaculate timing and technical virtuosity.
It’s still possible this could make a big time exhibition bout for Survivor Series, or for WrestleMania 33 next year… if WWE don’t mess it up again.