Sometimes we forget, though, that his appeal faded after a few years and he – along with Bill Goldberg – were viciously booed out of the company live.
7. HE HAS NO OPPONENTS LEFT
Over the span of his off and on WWE career since 2002, Brock Lesnar has wrestled high profile matches against the likes of The Rock, the Undertaker, Goldberg, Big Show, Eddie Guerrero, John Cena, Triple H, AJ Styles, Roman Reigns and so many others. Obviously, his list of rivals over the years literally reads like a list of current and future WWE Hall of Famers. Lesnar has even branched out and competed against the likes of Dean Ambrose and Braun Strowman in recent memory, and at this point it is difficult to think of many big stars in WWE that Brock hasn’t terrorized.
When you take all of this into consideration the story of Brock Lesnar’s career starts to feel like that of John Cena or Triple H, two men who have wrestled beyond the time frame of when they likely should have started calling it quits with their in ring careers. There will always be the occasional rumored feud, such as the more recent rumblings of a rivalry between Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, who recently returned to WWE after a lengthy absence, but ultimately there seems to be nothing left of any meaning for Brock Lesnar in the way of new opponents.
6. HE OVERSHADOWS RONDA ROUSEY
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock since January, in 2018 WWE managed to land perhaps the biggest sports star in the world when the company signed Ronda Rousey to a full time contract as a WWE Superstar. Rousey’s MMA background with the UFC made her the face of women in combat sports and seems to have been a big inspiration for WWE’s move to focus more on their women’s division, which Rousey now herself competes in. WWE seems to be putting a lot of eggs in the basket of Ronda Rousey and some WWE fans believe she may be a part of the first female main event in WrestleMania history.
With Ronda Rousey being built possibly into WWE’s biggest star, it seems a little contradictory at this point to still be pushing Brock Lesnar’s MMA background. Not only does it hurt Ronda Rousey to try to hype Brock Lesnar’s UFC history while he holds what the company calls Raw’s most important title, it might hurt Brock Lesnar himself, especially since Rousey is easily the most talked about WWE Superstar at the moment. It makes Lesnar look like he’s struggling to keep up with the new kid on the block, and that’s just sad.
5. HE’S UNPROFESSIONAL
Back in 2016, then WWE Champion Dean Ambrose did an interview with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on the WWE Network that spoke volumes to all of us about the work ethic of one Brock Lesnar. Ambrose, who had just had a match against Lesnar at WrestleMania earlier that year, expressed to Austin his disappointment with working with the “beast incarnate.” The match was built to make us believe it was going to tear down the house. What we got in reality was a short contest with a few chair shots and suplexes that was barely high enough quality to have been featured on a weekly episode of Monday Night Raw.
According to Dean Ambrose, Brock Lesnar doesn’t like to plan his matches and was completely lazy in the face of Dean’s hard work at attempting to make the match memorable. This is not a new accusation against Lesnar, who has also been rumored to have had some borderline violent outbursts backstage. Brock Lesnar is truly unprofessional and according to all of this completely unworthy of being pushed as one of WWE’s top stars. It’s time for WWE to put the Universal Championship on someone who has interest in more than just getting a quick paycheck.
4. HE’S A TOTAL JERK
The Brock Lesnar we see on television a handful of nights out of the year is just an awful, bad person. He’s violent and has an incredibly short temper, which he tends to take out on anyone and everyone for his own personal gain. He’s a selfish and cocky champion, but in the defense of his character this is professional wrestling and just about every character on Raw and SmackDown Live have similar qualities. The only problem here is that this is not just a character Lesnar portrays on television, at least not completely.
The truth is Lesnar really doesn’t care for people, not even his fans. A video surfaced years ago that shows Lesnar, alongside his real life wife and former WWE Diva Sable, at an airport completely blowing off a fan who wanted to meet him. There have been many stories of his angry outburst backstage at WWE events, too, but perhaps one of the worst examples of what kind of person Brock Lesnar is came in 2004 when he apparently screamed homophobic slurs at a man in a bar and subsequently told a reporter, “I don’t like gays.” Freedom of speech and opinion is one thing, but not even Brock Lesnar gets to be this big of a jerk.
3. HE’S A BAD EXAMPLE FOR YOUNG WWE STARS
As any professional wrestling organization needs to do to keep itself fresh, WWE is always trying to make news stars. With the constantly growing popularity of NXT as a sort of training brand for the company and now with the brand extension, WWE has more young stars than ever. The future of WWE lies in these upstarts and some of the best wrestling talent in the entire world is currently under contract with Vince McMahon. It’s obviously exciting to look at these men and women and try to imagine who the world champions of tomorrow could be, but they certainly don’t have a great example being set for them in Brock Lesnar.
With Lesnar reigning at the top of Raw with the Universal Championship for over a year now and getting all the various perks afforded to him, it’s easy to see how this might be incredibly discouraging for younger stars who are working night in and night out to get to the main event picture. Lesnar seems completely untouchable, as if he can do whatever he wants and he will only step out of the championship scene when he wants. How can potential future Universal Championship contenders feel that their hard work is going toward anything?
2. HE MAKES WWE LOOK GREEDY
As the Chairman of WWE, Vince McMahon is a very rich business man who has never made it a secret that, when it comes to decisions about the company, he goes where the money is. This fact alone makes it hard to judge him negatively for the choices he makes, because he is usually pretty honest about it. But there is a difference between making smart business decisions and being outright greedy, and that is the image portrayed by the company every day that Brock Lesnar stays on top, either with or without the Universal Championship in tow.
For years Brock Lesnar has kept a WWE schedule that can barely even be considered part time, with only a few appearances on Raw every year and just a few big pay per view matches. Having such a huge spotlight for so long on Lesnar in spite of this undermines all the hard work of WWE’s other Superstars. Despite the disregard for the work of everyone else and despite all of his unprofessional behavior, Brock Lesnar is still pushed ahead of everyone on Raw. This makes it clear that WWE not only goes where the money is, but that Vince McMahon and WWE value money over respect and basic decency.
1. IT’S TIME TO MAKE NEW STARS
In a certain sense, new stars are always being made. At this point NXT Superstars are graduating to both Raw and SmackDown Live at a rapid pace and most of them go on to become pretty big stars for WWE. Vince McMahon certainly has different criteria for WWE Superstars at times than does his son in law Triple H, so there is a bit of a culture shock for some of these rising stars and many of them end up in unpredictable situations. Nevertheless, NXT has produced truckloads of major stars who will carry WWE into the future, including Roman Reigns, Charlotte Flair, Seth Rollins, Shinsuke Nakamura, Alexa Bliss and more.
These men and women are all putting in the time and hard work, but what does it mean, especially for the men on Monday Night Raw, when they can only go so far? We’ve covered how Lesnar is the untouchable chosen star of the red brand despite rarely showing up and that he doesn’t particularly care whether or not he puts on a good match with anyone, so how is anyone supposed to get ahead? It’s well past time for Brock Lesnar to retire from the ring because he is a serious detriment to Raw and the overall WWE product. It’s time to build for the future and that means anointing some new stars to dominate the Universal Championship picture.