10 Times WWE Booking Failed Braun Strowman
2. No Mercy 2017
Braun Strowman shouldn't have been in this match at all if he wasn't booked to win. Yet, in spite of the company booking themselves into a corner when 'The Monster Among Men' was at his hottest, they still got things badly, badly wrong.
Ultimately, there were logical ways to deliver a Brock Lesnar victory, and there were realistic and worthy ways to work through a Braun Strowman defeat. This match, somehow, deftly avoided both.
After just a few minutes of what rapidly scanned as just Strowman getting his sh*t in, he suddenly had no follow through. The guy that tipped cars for fun had no mind to win a match nor tank to get it done. The longer it went, the more exhausted he looked, and the more exhausted he looked, the more it seemed clear that he wasn't on Lesnar's level.
Wrestling's not real. This shouldn't have been what we were seeing.
A mid-match kimura by 'The Beast' wasn't enough to maintain excitement in the painfully lacklustre battle when it became clear what outcome was coming. There was almost no aftercare for the gimmick either. Instead of Strowman finding Brock's car and tipping him over inside it, he waited one more month for his formal face turn, getting stuffed into a bin lorry by five other midcard heels to signify it.