How Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns Will Steal The Show At WWE SummerSlam 2018
Press F5 To Refresh
Picture the scene.
SummerSlam seven hours deep. A drained Roman Reigns draping himself over an even-more-exhausted Brock Lesnar with fans euphoric for the referee's hand finally counting three. A giant - the giant, in fact - slain by the former hate figure himself. The Universal Title no longer a hostage of fortune but a symbol of professional wrestling excellence once again. Pyro. Actual f*cking pyro. Tears in the eyes of all watching. The show-closing copyright graphic layered atop Reigns hitting all four posts with the red strap flying high above his head.
Picture the scene.
Please picture the scene. Because it's the one Vince McMahon's been picturing for years, and the fact that virtually his entire audience refuses to share his dream sequence leaves him looking more like Homer Simpson tripping balls on a Guatemalan insanity pepper than a Great Man(TM) on yet another money-spinning vision quest.
No, that Roman Reigns will never happen. Ever. It wasn't going to happen in 2015, when a Seth Rollins' cash-in wiped away the WrestleMania 31 audience's shared bloodlust with Brock Lesnar. It didn't happen in 2016, when Dallas fans chanted for NXT instead of paying the slightest bit of attention to Full Sail godfather Triple H's loss to 'The Big Dog'. The less said about this year's 'Show Of Shows' catastrophe the better - it was all said in April and will almost certainly be trotted out again when it's time for the end-of-year 'Worst Of's.
Yet, WWE persist. Roman's WrestleMania 34 loss was seemingly irredeemable until the company announced that the pair would do battle once more in a Saudi Arabian steel cage as Greatest Royal Rumble's top singles match. Most assumed this was McMahon at long last getting his fantasy finale via the multi-million dollar supershow. The theory was that the wrestling-starved audience would pop like balloons for everybody. This proved largely true until the Lesnar/Reigns clash somehow let all the air out again. It was as if the mere idea of them together had become Sports Entertainment poison regardless of how the matches played out. WrestleMania 34's brawl was booked as a brutal battering, but the disdainful crowd were so convinced of Roman's eventual ascension that they booed and beach ball'ed it out of the building before Brock had even hit his seventh F5.
McMahon not only can't get his perfect end, but he also can't even promote the match seemingly scientifically engineered to get there. No wonder the man still uses every in-house vehicle to perpetuate the increasingly ropey logic that he's a "genius" - his advancing years have only served to stand in total contradiction to the narrative. In truth, half of McMahon's masterstrokes have been happy accidents, collaborative efforts or at very least a little bit of luck. And that's not a criticism - Jesse Ventura always noted that the Honky Tonk Man was better lucky than good as he amassed an Intercontinental Title longevity record that still remains in tact 30 years after he set it. CM Punk might espouse that "luck is for losers", but half of the biggest winners in the industry he once adored have failed upwards and stayed there as much through serendipity than shrewdness.
The company have required lashings of this fortuitousness to reach a point that they can even sell the match ever again, let alone just four months after the last calamity. But there's something different about SummerSlam. And with a little bit of luck, they can make it through the night.
CONT'D...