10 Times WWE Picked The RIGHT Wrestler At The WRONG Time
8. Braun Strowman
Watching a wrestler win a championship should elicit fairly straightforward emotions. You either feel happy over the victor's triumph, or angry over the loser's defeat.
What you shouldn't feel is a sense of anticlimax. Yet, while watching Braun Strowman lift the Universal Championship over his head at the deeply weird WrestleMania 36, it was impossible to escape the fact that Braun's win came two years too late.
Back in 2018, Braun Strowman was arguably the most over member of the WWE roster. Fans popped huge whenever his signature roar blared through the loudspeakers of whichever arena WWE were operating in at the time, as Strowman had captured the wrestling world's attention through some insane feats of strength.
Strowman was capital H-Hot, but WWE did what it does best when a wrestler gets over beyond their expectations - feed them to the company's chosen ones (See also: Half the female roster vs. Charlotte).
Strowman suffered momentum-halting losses to Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns, making it clear to audiences that no matter how hard they cheered, Braun wasn't going to win the big one for them. This inevitably cooled fan interest in him (admittedly not helped by his daft tweets around the start of the pandemic), to the point that his eventual Championship win felt more bathetic than triumphant.
Funnily enough, Braun's opponent on the night underwent a similar experience during his first run in WWE...