Heading into Clash In Italy, I struggled to understand what good Brock Lesnar beating Oba Femi would do.
Oh, I get the intention: Femi wins one, Lesnar wins one. Now, there’s got to be a third showdown to settle the score. That’s how fight trilogies go.
No, not always.
Steve Austin beat The Rock at WrestleMania XV and X-Seven to win the WWE Championship. They met again for the final time at WrestleMania XIX, but Austin had already won the series.
Pump the brakes.
Dwayne, take it away:
“If there’s one thing
that Hollywood has taught me, that’s Act I and Act II don’t matter. The only thing that matters, everyone remembers: Act III. The end. The climax. The Grand finale.”
Those were “The Great One’s” words just before beating Austin on “The Grandest Stage of Them All” to close their rivalry and solidify his legacy by beating his greatest rival.
By Rock’s Law, what we saw at WrestleMania 42 with Femi smashing Lesnar doesn’t matter. Oh, it looks impressive: a dominant win that earned a big crowd pop and prompted Lesnar to retire.
Wow. Absolutely star-making.
But then Lesnar returned four weeks later, assaulted Femi to force a sequel, then beat him clean as a sheet in Italy.
Sure, you can tell me it took bum rushing Femi before the opening bell, putting him through a table, and hitting seven F-5s to do it. Whatever. Lesnar was smart, efficient, and undeterred in his pursuit of victory.
Mission accomplished.
So much for that star-making moment at Mania.
I get why WWE is pushing for a three-match. SummerSlam is in Lesnar’s billed hometown of Minneapolis, where he became an NCAA wrestling champion for the University of Minnesota.
The show is at U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the NFL’s Vikings, where the seating capacity is 66,000 — that’s before adding seats on the field. Translation: WWE is running a building that can host 70,000 people.
Oh, and by the way: they’re running it for two consecutive nights. To get as many fans into the stadium as possible, it needs attractions, and that’s where Lesnar comes in.
But Lesnar rolling in on a two-match skid would have made a third encounter more compelling, because then Lesnar would be facing something greater than Oba Femi: he’d be facing Father Time and the reality that his career is ending.
If this is indeed it, then surely it can’t end with him going out 0-2 and having his ass handed to him each time. It just can’t.
Right?
Unfortunately, we’re all left to wonder how much more violent and unhinged “the greatest combat sports athlete of all time” might have become to not only force a trilogy but to win — only to fail again and finally accept that it’s over.
Three dominant wins against the man who’s the Loch Ness Monster, Grendel, and Genghis Khan all rolled into one? That would have made Femi legendary.
Instead, he’s fighting to prove that his first win wasn’t a fluke. This, after catching lightning in a bottle at Mania and calling out Roman Reigns, fueling talk of a future match between the two coming sooner rather than later.
“The Ruler” had become “The Next Big Thing.”
But now? He’s just another victim of 50-50 booking, some dude trying to get his win back.
Oh, don’t worry. He will. But is Oba Femi gonna be any more over than he was after squashing Lesnar at Mania because of it?
In life, they say it’s about the journey, not the destination. In Femi’s case, he’s still heading to the moon. But the rocket we all thought WWE strapped to his back in April sputtered, causing him to go splat in May.
Coming into June, Femi’s entering the King of the Ring tournament, where the winner gets a world title shot at SummerSlam. But if Femi is facing Lesnar in Minneapolis, it means he’s facing the possibility of another loss on his way to the moon.
And like any trip bogged down by delays, it only makes reaching the destination a relief, not a celebration.
