Day One, the Royal Rumble, and How A Million Ways WWE Could Have Booked the Men's World TItle Scene Better

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Big Red Machine
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Day One, the Royal Rumble, and How A Million Ways WWE Could Have Booked the Men's World TItle Scene Better

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 30th, '22, 20:51

Now that a month has passed, I think it’s fair to say, without any reservations, that what WWE did with the WWE World Heavyweight Title at Day One was absolute crap. Yes, I understand that Roman had to isolate and thus had to miss Day One, and I understand that they didn’t want to disappoint the fans by also not having Brock wrestle at all. Putting Brock in the other title match made perfect sense. Having him win it, on the other hand, was a HUGE mistake.
Reports right after Day One were that Brock winning the title was part of a plan to ensure that they could get where they needed to go to keep the WrestleMania plans intact. At this point, it seems pretty clear that said plans are Brock vs. Roman (w/Heyman), and Big E. vs. Lashley (I supposed it could be Lashley vs. Drew, but in that case you just needed to have Lashley win the multi-man match and then do your angle).
Putting the belt on Brock meant that you pretty much had to do a f*ck finish to take the belt off of Brock, because you don’t want Brock looking weak going into the match with Roman. Doing a f*ck finish here, however, meant that whoever you chose to be the beneficiary of said f*ck finish wasn’t going to win the belt cleanly, and thus wasn’t going to feel like a legitimate champion, and thus the challenger for the belt at Mania won’t really feel like a legitimate champion if he wins. This would be a problem for anyone, but it’s an even bigger problem for Big E., who they not only had get pinned by Brock at Day One when Owens doing the job would have worked just as well, but who also won the belt in legal but let’s say morally dubious fashion, cashing in MITB on someone who had already wrestled (if Drew is the challenger you could theoretically argue that Big E. beat Lashley in a shady fashion and Lashley had beaten Drew in a shady fashion, so you’re kind of getting back to a “rightful” champion, but doing that would cast aspersions on Big E.’s reign, which they clearly don’t want to do).
This problem is only exacerbated by the specific way they did things on this show. The announcers focused on Roman disdainfully throwing he WWE World Heavyweight Title belt away after hitting Brock with it. Roman has disdain for the belt, and with the way WWE books we know Brock isn’t going to be demanding a rematch against Lashley to get it back, so he clearly doesn’t care about it… and that is what we’re supposed to be invested in Big E. (or Drew) chasing.
Brock didn’t need to win that belt at all, and in the scenario we now have, the only person who is diminished is Big E. He got pinned clean by Brock, and now he’s going to chase a title that someone else won on a f*ck finish, and which that person is going to be able to keep because Brock clearly has no interest in it (I’m sure he won’t be on Raw demanding a rematch with Lashley at Elimination Chamber so that he can also defend that title while challenging Roman at Mania, even though such a thing would actually make perfect sense for his character, who just wants to win titles and not show up to defend them very often). And we couldn’t even try to repair some of this damage by having Big E. win the Rumble. No. Brock had to win the Rumble, because an angle in a world title match on a Big Four show wasn’t enough spotlight for Brock vs. Roman. We had to give that match the Rumble win, too.
So we find out that Roman Reigns won’t be able to wrestle at Day One and we don’t want to disappoint the fans so we’re putting Brock in the other title match. How do we get to Big E. vs. Lashley and Brock vs. Roman (w/Heyman)?
Any number of ways! If you’re expecting a grand BRM fantasy booking scenario, I’m afraid you’ll be a little disappointed here, as all of these are going to be permutations of the same general ideas. What problems do we need to solve here:

1. HOW DO WE GET THE BELT OFF OF BIG E. AND ONTO LASHLEY?
This one is easy. Scenario One is to simply have Lashley pin Owens at Day One to win the title. Big E. is protected by not being pinned, but accepts that he did, in fact, lose the title. Obviously, he wants a rematch, and we now have the hook that it will be one on one, and Lashley will have to beat Big E. not someone else. You can do a rematch either at the Rumble or on TV leading up to it with some sort of f*ck finish to create a scenario where we keep the belt on Lashley, with some other heel getting involved to occupy Big E.’s time for the next month or so (admittedly, the only one who is at an appropriate level who Big E. hasn’t feuded with in the past year or is Miz, who is otherwise occupied with Edge, but I’m sure you could swing a story where Miz screw Big E. at the Rumble to try to bargain his way into a title match with Lashley in a kind of reverse of the deal he and Lashley had last year and set up a three-way for the title on TV where Lashley pins Miz, thus giving you a kayfabe reason to kill Big E.’s rematch so that Big E. has to win the Elimination Chamber to get a title shot at Mania or something like that). This would be paired with a scenario where Brock wins the Rumble.
Another option for a world where Brock has to win the Rumble is simply that Big E. retains at Day One, pinning Owens, beats some other heel at Royal Rumble, and winds up losing the belt to Lashley in the Elimination Chamber (with Big E. starting at the beginning but Lashley getting lucky and entering last, creating a kind of reversal of the MITB cash-in), and Big E. gets his rematch at Mania.
If Brock isn’t winning the Rumble, you can have Lashley pin Owens at Day One, then have Lashley take him out before a rematch, then have Big E. make a surprise return at the Rumble and win it. Or, alternatively, you can have Big E. pins Owens to retain at Day One, find some other heel for Big E to retain against at Royal Rumble, and have Lashley win the Rumble and have Lashley go in as the challenger, saying that on “The Grandest Stage of Them All,” he will expose Big E.’s reign for the fraud that it is.

2. HOW DO WE KEEP ROMAN VS. BROCK GOING ALL THE WAY FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR UNTIL WRESTLEMANIA?
There are any number of ways that this can be done. The simplest one is that to have Brock win the Rumble and just choose Mania for his title shot (remember that in these scenarios, Brock does not win the other title at Day One, but doesn’t get pinned, either). This is doable, although it makes it rather hard to come up with a good way to turn Heyman before the Mania match itself, which would result in a f*ck finish in the main event of WrestleMaia, which you’d really want to avoid.
The next is to have Roman set up various roadblocks for Brock. Maybe he puts a bounty on Brock in the Royal Rumble. Maybe Roman just runs in on the Rumble and eliminates Brock himself (maybe both happen, and Roman only runs in when it’s clear that the low-level heels who have taken him upon his offer have no chance of eliminating Brock). Or maybe Brock just isn’t in the Rumble at all, and Roman and the Usos ambush him and injure him for a bit.
Any of these scenarios will lead to the usual “Brock on a rampage” story where he is tearing things up ad threatening people in order to get the match he wants, but Roman won’t agree to one no matte what Heyman does or says, and management won’t either, because as we’ve seen over the past year and a half, Pearce and Deville are total pushovers when it comes to Roman. Eventually Brock would do whatever thing to whoever he needs to do it to in order to get someone to agree to book the match.
That being said, I’d like to suggest a slightly different scenario for that. As much as I hated it, doing the f*ck finish that WWE did in the Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins match at Royal Rumble opens up a rather interesting way out of the generic “Brock goes on a rampage” routine, made possible by the history of those involved. What if management grow some spines and the reason management won’t book Brock vs. Roman is that they think that Seth should get a title shot first, having technically beaten the champion by DQ? Brock wouldn’t like this at all, and would surely ruin the rematch, which takes place on TV, and attack both guys.
Now people are talking about a Brock vs. Rollins vs. Roman three-way. The last time this happened- at WrestleMania, no less- Rollins walked out with the title. Obviously neither Brock nor Roman like that idea very much, the Roman vs. Seth story is the Seth has Roman’s number… although Roman really did get the best of him at the Rumble and could have won if he had kept his temper in check, and Roman really doesn’t want to face Brock, either… so what if Roman proposes that Seth and Brock face off in a #1 contendership match at Elimination Chamber, with the winner facing him at WrestleMania. Management would surely agree to it to stop the fighting and stop Brock from ruining their Seth vs. Roman rematch, so they will bend over and agree. Brock would win that, and now Roman is stuck having to defend his title against Brock at Mania…but Roman might actually be okay with that, because he has an ace up his sleeve in the form of Paul Heyman, who he can use to either turn on Brock at Mania (again, not the preferred thing to do) or to set up some sort of scenario beforehand to give Roman an advantage going into WrestleMania.

3. HOW DO WE TURN HEYMAN ON BROCK?
There are two general archetypes of how to do this. You can either have Heyman be doing things to help Roman in secret and have Brock find out, or you can do the big dramatic turn (either during a match like the above-mentioned potential Royal Rumble match, or you can have Heyman lead Brock into a trap to set up the “Roman and friends assault and badly injure Brock” scenario).
You’ve all seen the second a million times over the years, so all I’ll say about that is that the art is in where you do it, and seeing if you can come up with some sort of little twist so that it’s not just another rendition of “this guy’s manager turned on him to cost him a match. The Rollins vs. Brock scenario I proposed provides a wonderful opportunity for this. If Heyman has been in Roman’s pocket all along, then you can create a situation where Paul reveals his allegiance to Roman during a match where Roman is not directly involved, but his interests are. For example, perhaps Rollins suffers a big injury, and Paul tries to do something to ensure that Rollins wins so that Roman’s Mania title defense will be against the injured Rollins. I also like the little twist that Brock will actually overcome Heyman’s treachery and still win the match, as the important aspect to the story here is the treachery and the revealing of Heyman’s true allegiance, with an outcome not actually needing to be effected to achieve that goal.
For the “Heyman is doing things to screw Brock in negotiating his contracts and Brock finds out about it” scenario, it’s important to leave clues. Fortunately, we actually have a few loose ends/questions that need to answered already built in to the story that will allow us to leave said clues.
For example, why isn’t the scheduled Brock vs. Roman match not just rescheduled for the Rumble as soon as we know Roman is cleared? You could do anything from saying that it was a one-off contract that was written without any sort of “in case this doesn’t happen” clause (quite frankly and easy kayfabe sell, as Brock didn’t really earn that shot by winning any matches, anyway, but can still feel like there was treachery involved when all is revealed) to Paul simply telling Brock that management said that being in the WWE World Heavyweight Title match at Day One counted as his title shot and it later being revealed to be a lie. Both of those scenarios would result in Brock declaring that he wants to go after Roman and ordering Paul to get him a spot in the Royal Rumble (or you could even just have Paul say “we don’t know when or even if Roman is coming back, so I got you a spot in the Royal Rumble instead” from the get-go.
The Rumble gives us some more opportunity to leave clues that Paul is secretly working for Roman. The Usos entering at one and two is something of a coincidence, and it could also be a coincidence that Brock enters at number three, so he has to fight both Usos. Then more of a coincidence when the next two in are some heel stooges who have declared that they will try to cash in on a bounty that Roman put Brock. Let’s say that’s Corbin and Moss. Then the next man in is Ricochet. And then the returning Drew McIntyre, so the first six non-Brock entrants are Roman’s lackeys, two heels who are looking to cash in a bounty on Brock, and the two men who combined to eliminate Brock in 2020. Of course, things wouldn’t work as planned, as Brock would survive, and Drew would immediately go after Corbin and Moss rather than trying to go after Brock, the idea is there (and, of course, when all of this fails, you can then have Roman come out and attack and eliminate Brock from behind). Heyman intimidating Pearce by claiming that this is what Brock wants, or even just flat-out colluding with Sonya to stack things like this is completely plausible, given the characters.
You can do other things over the few weeks after that are suspicious, such as Paul proposing that Brock agree to face Roman in some sort of no DQs or Ladder match where the Usos could interfere at will, or maybe heels trying to collect a bounty on Brock seem to always know where he is, and Paul always seems to leave right before an attack happens, until, eventually, Brock figures it out and confronts Paul (Brock has talked to Pearce earlier in the week and Paul’s lies were exposed), leading to Roman and the Usos coming out to save Paul, and there’s your big angle.

That’s a few ideas that an easily be mixed and matched to get from where they were at Day One to where they clearly want to be at WrestleMania, not one of them involved diminishing Big E. or the title he and Lashley will be fighting over, and would have avoided all of the backlash that having Brock beat Big E. resulted in, just for the sake of doing another f*ck finish at the Rumble and wasting a Royal Rumble win on Brock Lesnar to get to Mania like WWE did.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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