5 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Payback 2020

4. Lashley Captures Gold

Bobby Lashley
WWE.com

For the longest time, Bobby Lashley has floundered about looking lost as he wins a couple matches and loses others. He took a backseat to Lana and her feud with husband Rusev, then married the Ravishing Russian and started losing matches due to her distractions.

It looked like he was going to completely wasted as a wrestler, but suddenly after WrestleMania 36, Lana was given the heave-ho, and MVP’s Hurt Business stable took shape. And while the stable has had mixed success, Lashley has been really well protected overall, looking strong most of the time and rarely losing matches.

Things paid off Sunday, when Lashley won the United States Championship cleanly from Apollo Crews. Considering that Crews hadn’t done anything with the title during his reign and how protected Bobby has been, hopefully this means WWE is positioning the All-Mighty for good things in the future.

Let’s just hope that the booking trope of “champion loses all non-title matches to set up feuds” doesn’t take hold.

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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.