Brock Lesnar’s Unnecessary Championship Win, More WWE Day 1 2022 Hot Takes

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Credit: WWE.com

Day 1 proved to be a lot like the other 364 for WWE as questionable booking decisions plagued the first premium live event on the road to WrestleMania 38.

From Brock Lesnar’s questionable WWE Championship victory over Big E, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens and Bobby Lashley in the blockbuster Fatal 5-Way main event, made such after a late scratch from the card, to Becky Lynch retaining her Raw Women’s Championship at the expense of Liv Morgan’s momentum, the show left fans scratching their heads more than once.

It also made for a few hot takes to start 2022.

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The WWE Day 1 festivities began Saturday with the Kickoff Show, which saw Sheamus and protege Ridge Holland battle Cesaro and Ricochet. An early injury to Holland left The Celtic Warrior to go it alone against his babyface opponents.

Whom he defeated. By himself.

Sure, the layout made sense. Sheamus delivered White Noise to Ricochet on the floor, eliminating him from the picture and leaving the former WWE champion to battle his former tag team partner, who he blasted with a Brogue Kick for the win.

Why not switch up the finish the minute it became clear Holland would not be returning to the match? 

Was it so imperative that Sheamus get the win that it was decided that beating both Ricochet and Cesaro and diminishing their credibility was worth it? Surely, Sheamus isn’t going to be fighting for the WWE or Universal Championship anytime soon so why not just have him lose the match, then complain for a week or two about the numbers disadvantage?

Handicap matches always hurt when the guys with the advantage lose. It devalues them and hurts their credibility. Neither Cesaro nor Ricochet could really afford that, especially considering how weak the depth on the SmackDown roster is. 

Now, a late addition to the card that had little hype calls into question the legitimacy of two extraordinary athletes who are really above these pre-show matches in the first place.

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Should Madcap Moss vs. Drew McIntyre have been on a Premium Live Event card? Probably not.

Did it need to go 10 minutes? Absolutely not.

Those two questions aside, Moss showed up and showed out in his first opportunity to shine on that particular stage, hanging in there with a former WWE champion and never looking out of place.

The former Minnesota Golden Gopher, who has been with the company since 2014, proved his abilities in the ring despite being one-half of one of the worst gimmicks in all of professional wrestling right now. There were no cringe-worthy dad jokes or attempts at pulling swords from desks. Instead, he busted his ass in a match against one of the measuring sticks in the company and opened a lot of eyes to his abilities between the ropes.

Does that mean he will suddenly be on the receiving end of some massive push up the ranks on SmackDown? Not necessarily. He is in a good spot with Happy Corbin, despite the character, as solid midcard heels and that should not change. What it will do is open up opportunities for him to work with more main event-level talent.

He passed a massive test Saturday night in Atlanta. Now, it will be up to him to continue proving he can excel against the top stars in the company so that more matches of this magnitude come his way.

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When Liv Morgan lost her first shot at the Raw Women’s Championship on December 6, it was excusable because Becky Lynch cheated to defeat her. It enhanced the fans’ desire to see Morgan dethrone Big Time Becks because they knew the former Riott Squad member was seconds away from capturing gold before the heel resorted to underhanded tactics to preserve her title reign.

It also set up a hotter match for Saturday’s show in which fans were eager to see Morgan’s childhood dream pay off in the form of her first championship victory.

Except, it didn’t happen.

Despite a distinct desire for the young New Jersey native to capture the gold, Morgan fell short. Again.

Lynch caught her in the middle of her finisher and drove her to the mat with the uranage slam and pinned her. Cleanly. There was no disputing what we saw. Lynch was the superior competitor, absorbing everything Morgan threw at her and scoring the win.

Sure, the win strengthened Lynch’s role as champion but it put a halt to Morgan’s momentum. It killed it with one three-count.

Fans grow tired of seeing these characters that they invest in built-up, given television time, then beaten down. At some point, the fans have to have their faith in these performers rewarded before they grow tired of the chase and move on.

Morgan had such a groundswell of support that Saturday was absolutely the time to pull to proverbial trigger. Even if she only held it for a few weeks and dropped the title right back to Big Time Becks at Royal Rumble, she would have made good on her quest to win the title.

Now, she’s a failure. A two-time failure.

Those are incredibly difficult characters to try and rehabilitate, especially when it means moving them onto something not nearly as significant as a championship program.

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Brock Lesnar is great. He’s awesome. This incarnation is as fun and enjoyable a watch as we have ever seen from the future Hall of Famer. He is a believable, physical specimen and unstoppable force who is clearly having fun in this latest run. It shows and makes his performances a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

With that said, there is no reason he needed to win the WWE Championship at Day 1.

Maybe it was a rash booking decision, made late in the day when it became apparent that Roman Reigns would not be able to compete due to a positive COVID-19 test. Perhaps someone in the writing room had a bright idea to plant the seeds for a unified title match at the top of the WrestleMania card.

Whatever the case may be, Lesnar winning the WWE Championship crippled the Raw brand and diminished the main event credibility of Big E in one fell swoop.

Big E was already struggling. As a worker with a larger-than-life personality, no one doubted his ability to be a main event star in WWE. What was in doubt was WWE Creative’s willingness to go all-in with him. Since winning the title in September, the powerhouse of The New Day found himself moving from feud to feud, match to match, without much in the way of storytelling or character development.

He was the same Big E we always loved, but with the top prize on Raw around his waist. Nothing was done on the part of WWE to really establish him in that role or make him that top-flight main event babyface that someone like John Cena had been.

One way to really hammer home that he was the guy on Monday nights would have been to have him beat multiple top contenders in a big premium live event headliner. Instead, he lost his title in eight minutes. Worse? He was the star that was driven to the mat with an F-5 and pinned cleanly in the center of the ring by The Beast.

But why?

If the company was hellbent on booking Lesnar to go over, he could have done so by pinning Rollins or Owens, both of whom have demonstrated an ability to shake off losses and remain over with fans. He could have pinned Lashley, who has been protected enough over the last year that losing to Lesnar would not have hurt.

Big E was the one guy who could least afford to take the pin yet that is exactly what happened.

We know Lesnar is on a collision course with Roman Reigns, presumably for a high-stakes match-up at WrestleMania, but where does Big E go from here?

Does he remain a top star on Raw or does the company do to him what it did to his former tag team partner, Kofi Kingston, by shoving him back into the midcard? One can only hope that isn’t the case because Big E has proven himself too many times over the last year to be a performer deserving of everything he has received and worthy of a push at the top of the card.

Unfortunately, those in power have repeatedly proved ill-equipped or unwilling to provide him the support necessary to solidify him in that position. Saturday’s loss certainly does not help.