10 PPV Main Events WWE Sacrificed For Part-Time World Champions

The story was right there.

Brock Lesnar's optimal capacity on the WWE roster was realized between April 2012 and August 2014. Acting as a prizefighter who fought on his terms and genuinely believed himself bigger than the company he was contracted to was perfection for someone who knew going in that he was only working limited dates and only the most important events. The problem is, WWE thought that would translate well to the world championship scene, not taking into consideration that would mean the most important titles disappearing from the promotion for months at a time. While Lesnar's limited schedule has provided some classics along the way, WWE has started to spin their wheels because they hadn't been able to break from the formula for the last six years.

Take Royal Rumble 2019 for example. Much like previous encounters with AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan, Lesnar was crafting yet another classic with Finn Bálor and his expert salesmanship had fans believing that maybe this was the time that Goliath fell. In short, it should have been.

Bálor had been battling back to this point for the last 30 months and regaining the title he never lost against easily the greatest challenge of his career and then defending the championship against Seth Rollins, the man who put him on the shelf and forced him to surrender the belt in the first place. A WrestleMania main event almost three years in the making?

Eh, fans don't have patience for long-term storytelling...