5 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2017

3. Strowman Continues To Improve

strowman reigns
WWE.com

Despite the loss Sunday night, Braun Strowman turned in another solid performance, showing that he has an aptitude for performing in the ring.

Strowman hung with Roman Reigns, who despite the many criticisms leveled at how he’s been booked, has always been more than capable as a wrestler. The two men put together a match that might not have been as epic as the Big Show/Strowman encounter on Raw a couple weeks ago, but it certainly was a PPV-quality bout. Both men hit some high-impact moves, and an announcers’ table was turned into rubble in the process.

It’s a crime Braun suffered his first loss in a match with no stakes on a B-show PPV like that, but if WWE is smart, they’ll find a way to get him right back on track fighting for some level of prestige soon. Strowman certainly has proven that he’s a project worthy of further development, so hopefully this loss was only a setback and not the beginning of his falling back to Earth.

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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.