10 Dumbest Ways WWE Promoted WrestleMania Matches
6. Brock Lesnar Vs. Roman Reigns - WrestleMania 34
There's an old Family Guy joke, back when the show was quite funny, in which Peter Griffin's new, evil toy firm, in a bid to distract him, hires a grotesque girl to make his daughter look pretty by comparison. This throwaway joke seemed to inspire the top programme of WWE's biggest show of the year.
Brock Lesnar was presented, in meta fashion, as an uninterested mercenary who could barely bother himself to show up. WWE pitched Roman Reigns as his antithesis: a committed avatar for the working man. If the working man paid his money, he was going to be there, in every town, making sure they got their money's worth.
There were...multiple problems with this; Lesnar appeared even less than usual, and did less than usual when he did, and thus fans were deprived of even the involuntary pop Lesnar's killer act generated. He was, for all intents and purposes, Baron Corbin in this scenario.
In addition, fans did not look upon Roman as the lesser of two evils, but instead saw through the cynicism of the stunt. The whole reality bent was compromised by Roman's "suspension", a tired sympathy ploy trope, and we arrived in New Orleans with a sense of grim inevitability. The match wasn't even perversely entertaining. It was ugliness of the wrong stripe. This uninterested mercenary pounded Roman's brains out of his skull, and what did they say about Roman?
He couldn't get it done against a guy who couldn't give a f*ck.