New Column: On Rollins vs. Lesnar

Jack-Hammer says:

Is Rollins the ideal candidate? Depends on who you ask and what qualifies someone to be “ideal” to them.

For me, I don’t worry about whether or not Rollins is perfect for the role as I just look at what he has to offer and the situation he finds himself in. For the year of 2018, Raw was arguably the worst its ever been with any number of legit issues, most of which seemed to all go down at the same time: WWE using precious airtime to devote to shows like the Greatest Royal Rumble, Super Show-Down & Crown Jewel, all of which were mediocre events that didn’t even rank as good house shows which, in all honesty, was really all they were.

Another huge issue was chaotic, nonsensical and sometimes just flat out shit ass stupid booking decisions that ranged from atrocities like the Bobby Lashley “sister” promo segment to devoting far too much airtime to those who just didn’t have the ability to warrant it, such as Baron Corbin. I know that piss poor creative decisions can and do happen, of course, but we’re talking better than 6 straight months of pretty mediocre stuff that just dominated Raw week after week and the man in charge of it all has a massive bank account combined with an even more massive ego and feels, at times, that his judgment is holy scripture.

When you look at 2018, Seth Rollins stands out as one of the few bright spots for Raw and was legitimately the workhorse of the brand for most of the year. Even if storylines were just sucking ass all over the place, and they very often were in 2018 on Raw, at least Seth Rollins frequently delivered high quality matches and was still able to make you care about him to such a degree that you kept waiting and hoping for bigger things to happen to him.

When compared to Brock Lesnar, pretty much nobody on the roster “stacks up” well against Lesnar but that’s due to more of the nonsensical bull crap that’s surrounded booking Lesnar. It’s no secret that Vince loves the whole muscular, A1 personality, alpha male stuff; it’s one of the chief reasons why WWE has tried to manufacture so many huge mega moments for Roman Reigns over the years despite constant and frequent push back from the audience. The problem is that Vince has booked Lesnar to look so strong and protected him to such a ridiculous degree that nobody comes off as being “credible” to beat him, even other big ol’ alpha males like Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman. Even John Cena during the height of his career didn’t get the sort of protection that Lesnar gets and Cena’s protection, much of the time, could be pretty damned absurd.

So where does that leave WWE? It leaves them with the only real option they have right now: Seth Rollins. Fans like Rollins and have liked him for years, he can go inside the ring, he can deliver well on the mic and he’s really the only guy on Raw at this point in time that fans remotely care about seeing face Lesnar. If Drew McIntyre was a face or an edgy tweener, and had been for a good 6 or 8 months by now, then maybe he’d fit the bill. Lashley can physically hang with Lesnar, but the man’s just abysmally dull because Vince, for whatever reason, won’t portray him as the believable badass that he actually is and that actually made him watchable in TNA/Impact. He’s already beaten Braun Strowman in triple threats, fourways and singles matches whereas, in my opinion, Strowman should have beaten Lesnar at least 6 months ago and because of Vince’s nonsense, Stroman has cooled down considerably from being, at one time, the most over babyface on the entire roster.

So yeah, at this point in time and the current WWE climat, Rollins is as close to “ideal” as I think anyone can be. If he doesn’t walk out of WrestleMania as champion, then I honestly have no earthly idea where they go from here or with whom. At this point, I’d probably settle for just about anybody if it meant getting the title off Lesnar and giving Raw back something it hasn’t had for almost 2 years now: a consistent main event title picture to give the talent something to actually strive for and fight over.