The cover story of the May 7 Wrestling Observer Newsletter goes in-depth about Vince McMahon’s decision to put John Cena over Brock Lesnar at WWE Extreme Rules in Lesnar’s first match since retiring from UFC.
The Observer reports, “According to those close to the situation, it was made clear to Lesnar and Cena that this was a one match program, Cena gets his win, because that story of the babyface taking the ungodly beating and coming back to win has been told. Maybe it could have been months long, or a year long, and more money could have been drawn, but they felt that in real life, as opposed to storyline, Lesnar could leave at any time. They felt needed their top guy getting the win first time out to make sure it happened. They weren’t in the business of booking multiple Lesnar vs. Cena matches. They decided to only do one. And Cena probably is the guy who should beat Lesnar, but it also should have been at the end of the run, not the beginning. But you do have the New Japan example, where Lesnar was brought in, beat everyone and was to lose the IWGP title to Hiroshi Tanahashi. And instead, that never happened. In fairness to Lesnar, they cut his pay before the match so he decided not to return for less money than the original deal. But business wise, that’s the same Lesnar but a completely different game. This Lesnar after being UFC champion is multiple times the star of the New Japan version. And he’s also making even more multiple times the money, which is a factor that makes it a lot less likely he’ll bail ahead of time.”
Also, the reasoning for Brock Lesnar breaking Triple H’s arm the next night on Raw is to set up a likely Brock vs. HHH match at SummerSlam that would give Brock the chance to get a win over someone credible so he can be rebuilt as the monster heel he’s being billed as:
“It would make sense from here to go with Lesnar vs. HHH, and since HHH is largely retired, to give Lesnar a big win to start building him for a match with Rock, Austin or Undertaker at Mania.”
CB’s Slant: I would suspect the two big money matches for WrestleMania would be Brock vs. Rock or Brock vs. Taker. If Brock is to get a signature win, however, I would assume Brock vs. Rock makes the most sense since THE STREAK will never end. In fact, a card of Brock vs. Rock and Cena vs. Taker at the top of the “special attractions” portion of the main event card would be fine by me.
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