What if Roman Reigns had beaten Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania 34
Last year this time, WWE was gearing up for its annual Elimination Chamber PPV. This was after a quite successful Royal Rumble with Shinsuke Nakamura and Asuka winning their respective Royal Rumble matches.
While there were questions on whom Asuka would face at WrestleMania (she eventually faced Charlotte for the SmackDown Women's Championship), Nakamura had announced immediately that he will be facing AJ Styles for the WWE Championship. This left the big red belt on RAW without a #1 contender at that time.
A 7-man chamber match was scheduled for the Elimination Chamber to determine Brock Lesnar's opponent at WrestleMania. To no one's surprise, The Big Dog, Roman Reigns came out victorious after pinning Braun Strowman to win the Elimination Chamber and challenge The Beast for the Universal Title at the Grandest Stage of them all!
This match main evented the show. It was supposed to be the crowning of the new face of the WWE "Universe" and the end of a huge chase of the Red Title for Roman Reigns. With the rumors of Brock Lesnar leaving for UFC soon, the betting odds were hands-on in favor of the Powerhouse of the Shield. Everyone was expecting him to slay The Beast once and for all.
But what transpired on that day was a surprising victory in the main event for Brock Lesnar in what was one of the most boring yet bloody matches in the history of WWE. The Big Dog eventually feuded with The Beast till SummerSlam and finally pinned him to win the title, with some help from the Monster Among Men.
In this article, we take a look and speculate the potential outcomes and implications had Roman Reigns won the title at WrestleMania 34 instead of SummerSlam. In that case, a lot of things would have been different heading into WrestleMania this year. Feel free to comment your thoughts on whether this would have been a better option or not.
#1 A full-time champion on RAW
We all know what a larger-than-life athlete Brock Lesnar is, and how Vince McMahon looks at him as a ticket-booster for WWE. The biggest issue with The Beast's title reign was that he quite often used to miss RAW and just wrestle at the big PPVs. There were times when he didn't show up for over a month.
One of the main reasons why SmackDown feels like a better product than RAW is that the champion actually shows up every week, giving time to progress storylines and create interesting feuds. But that was not the case with Brock Lesnar.
Had Reigns won the title at WrestleMania 34, the fans wouldn't have cheered for him. But having the champion show-up on every episode RAW would have made the title more relevant. It also would have given opportunities to a lot of other deserving talents to feud for the Universal Title.
The night after Roman Reigns actually won the Title at SummerSlam, he issued an open challenge to the locker room to prove that he's a fighting champion. If he had won the title at WrestleMania and issued more of these open challenges, it would have uplifted the status of the title and given the fans a lot of interesting matchups.
Imagine someone like Elias or Bray Wyatt showing up out of nowhere and challenging for the Title. Superstars from NXT like Aleister Black or EC3 could have also made a one-off appearance on the main roster to hype up the casual audience about the talent that NXT possesses.