5 Ups & 7 Downs For WWE Raw (8 Sept - Results & Review)

2. Brock Ruins Everything x 44

Brock Lesnar’s appearance on SmackDown was insidious, bordering on diabolical. The video recap of his interference in the United States Championship match between John Cena and Sami Zayn prompted this Raw reply.

Without even touching on the obvious issue of WWE continuing to employ and use Brock on television, his run-in on SmackDown was just a tired, decade-old playbook being recycled to diminished effect. When Lesnar first returned and showed up to wreak havoc, it was new, fresh, and exciting. In 2025, blowing up the last-ever Cena/Zayn match as part of an angle is just plain dumb. It doesn’t generate “heel heat” – it creates “f*** off heat.”

But let’s talk about the more sinister aspect of this, with Lesnar’s name appearing 44 times in a suit Janel Grant filed against McMahon and WWE alleging sexual abuse and human trafficking.

WWE bringing Brock back is bad enough, but the sports entertainment juggernaut that’s too big to fail clearly feels it’s untouchable these days. They ran Lesnar out there Friday night in a situation where he was guaranteed to get booed mercilessly – breaking up an all-face match will do that – and had the temerity to book it on the same show as AJ Lee returning after a decade-long absence.

As Michael Hamflett noted on the WhatCulture SmackDown Review podcast, this is WWE’s version of sportswashing, called “Brock-washing,” because the company knew AJ’s return would dominate the headlines and attention of fans, sucking all the oxygen out of the room and diminishing the pushback against Lesnar’s continued use on WWE programming.

It’s disgusting, and it should continue to be called out, not ignored for the sake of reviewing the product.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.