5 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2017

3. Part-Timer Vs. Part-Timer For Universal Title

Goldberg Jackhammers Owens
WWE.com

Well, it looks like Raw’s top title will be contested between two men who have wrestled a combined seven televised matches since WrestleMania XXXII, two of which involved the Royal Rumble in January.

Goldberg plowed through a distracted Kevin Owens Sunday night to win the WWE Universal Championship, making his already agreed-upon WrestleMania XXXIII match against Brock Lesnar a title bout between two part-time wrestlers. Joy. The Goldberg/Lesnar match already had serious heat, with Goldberg winning their first two bouts (WrestleMania XX and Survivor Series 2016) and eliminating Brock from the Rumble this winter, so including the title simply wasn’t necessary.

But in addition to that, Owens looked like a complete chump, getting zero offense in as the in-his-prime six-month champion lost in a 20-second match. You just obliterated your top champion with a guy who has literally had five minutes of ring time in his three matches combined. That’s not to say that KO should have had Goldberg on the ropes, but they could have actually had something resembling a match since that was the selling point for the PPV.

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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.