Zitat:A lot of times people talk about how there’s no long-term planning but the WrestleMania 34 main event for April 8, 2017, which obviously could change, is set for Lesnar vs. Reigns for the Universal title.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Reigns is beating Undertaker or that Lesnar will have a full one year run as champion, although both could happen. I have no idea of what the finish will be of Undertaker vs. Reigns. The goal is very much to make Reigns the next Cena, which was the plan for Santa Clara two years ago, until they decided to delay it based on fan reaction.

The plan is to once again build for a year and have the big coronation at WrestleMania. The idea between now and then is for Reigns to be the face, not just when he wins the title, but to fully replace John Cena as the lead babyface of the company. How they’ll make that work is uncertain. They may just go with the idea that the fans that attend TVs and PPVs that boo Reigns are a minority of their worldwide audience and ignore the obvious crowd reaction. It’s hard to believe that in one year, considering it’s been more than two years since they’ve tried to change things, that the Santa Clara reaction of Lesnar being far and away the most popular wrestler on the show as the heel, and Reigns being even more far and away the most hated, even positioned as main event babyface, will change much with another year of attempting to convince fans Reigns is the guy.

Whether they’ll just say what they’ve been saying and screw it, that the masses like Reigns (he does move merchandise well) or they go with the Naito idea of turning him into a cool heel to make him cheered (and I’d be pretty sure Vince McMahon himself couldn’t pick Naito out of a police lineup) and use Heyman to make Lesnar a heel (which really hasn’t happened either), I don’t know.

Goldberg’s contract expires at WrestleMania but the run was considered a success and the door is open to use him for big shows in the future.

Then again, even if the idea was he’s done after Mania, that could change, since the original deal was Survivor Series and that’s it and then they extended him until Mania.

The plan in place is that Lesnar will do more shows from this point forward, in what will be the final year of his current three-year WWE contract, especially since UFC is now clearly part of his past.

He’s been on TV almost every week and done some house shows of late. The impression we’ve been given is he will never work a full schedule, but he will work more dates over the next year, as has been shown by his doing more house shows than ever before and working all but one Monday in the last two months before WrestleMania.

As for Reigns vs. Undertaker, there are a dozen different ways you can tell that story that could involve either man winning depending on how you want to tell it. You could come out of the match with just the standard Reigns winning to start the build for the next Mania. He could stay face or go short-term heel. He could get screwed by a third party (Braun Strowman). He could lose clean and do a story of him starting from the bottom and climbing his way up with a new motive and purpose, etc.

The difficulty is keeping the two away from each other and keeping Reigns out of the title picture, and getting enough fresh opponents to keep Lesnar headlining much of the year. Lesnar doesn’t have to hold the title for the full year, but does have to be in the title picture most of the way. He can trade with someone if need be to keep things fresh. Given the way things are, a full year for the obvious match is difficult which is why I sensed the Lesnar vs. Reigns match for SummerSlam. That is definitely not the case now, but as joked, this plan could change on a moment’s notice at any time over the next 13 months.

Zitat:“What would you think about Brock Lesnar defending the Universal Title against Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania in NOLA in 2018? That seems to be the direction. I like it as it would give Lesnar a one year run as champ which also would necessitate Lesnar working a few more dates on his last year of his current contract. Seems logical to me. Lesnar could defend the title monthly, if required, quite easily on an enhanced albeit manageable schedule.”