10 Mistakes WWE Has Made With WrestleMania 33

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 33. It’s a nostalgia-bait match between two powerhouses, and it’s likely that its inevitably short length will be refreshing after watching a seven hour show.

But the danger here is that WWE have put all of their eggs in the wrong basket.

Whoever wins, we’re going to have a champion who appears at best on every other RAW, and the Universal Championship will become even more of a joke than it was in the hours following its reveal. Whereas the WWE Championship has been elevated in recent months, following Dean Ambrose’s fairly lacklustre run with the belt, the Universal Championship is now the paperweight for a man who realistically couldn’t last five minutes in the ring with any current WWE Superstar.

Besides, Goldberg and Lesnar’s feud was never even about title belts in the first place. Outside of kayfabe, it was a cynical marketing ploy for WWE 2K17. Inside kayfabe, it was about how “Goldberg always had Lesnar’s number”, and that despite the fact that Brock had ended The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak, his loss to Goldberg at WrestleMania XX was a black mark against his stellar record.

Technically, it still is about that, which only makes the Universal Championship seem more like an afterthought, and less like a hotly contested prize.