8 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 36 (Part 1)

1. And Another Thing…

Braun Strowman Goldberg
WWE.com

Why is Braun Strowman, who last was seen losing his Intercontinental Championship to Sami Zayn, suddenly replacing Roman Reigns to challenge for the WWE Universal Championship?

Yes, we know that Roman made a personal (and smart) decision to pull out of Mania because of the virus and the fact he’s immunocompromised, and while WWE couldn’t really mention that as a storyline reason for the change, something would have been better than nothing. Reigns was in all the promotional material, including the opening video, and suddenly, there’s Braun in his place.

On top of that, Strowman then won the Universal title in an embarrassingly bad match, featuring four spears and four powerslams. That was literally the entire match. So Goldberg slaying The Fiend results in him losing to a guy who’s never been able to win the big one because he was substituted into the match at the last minute.

Hey, good for Braun, who’s been screwed over by bad booking for years, but this is just comically bad in terms of sudden turns, lack of planning and poor execution. Hopefully, Strowman will make something of this and not just be keeping the title warm for Roman’s latest coronation.

Advertisement
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.