On the RAW after the Royal Rumble, Stephanie McMahon announced the main event for Fastlane. This main event will determine who would challenge WWE World Heavyweight Champion Triple H at Wrestlemania 32, and will feature WWE’s three top stars battling it out. The “Beast Incarnate” Brock Lesnar will face former champion Roman Reigns and Intercontinental Champion Dean Ambrose for a shot at the title. However, is this triple threat match a bad idea for a Fastlane main event?
This piece was actually inspired by an article from WhatCulture, which talked about the issues with the Fastlane main event. After reading this article, I thought about the main event of the show and I realised there was one major problem that was causing significant damage to the main event. The problem with the match is the Authority.
The Authority put this match together on RAW, which is the root to a lot of problems with the match. The main issue is that from a story-telling perspective, it would make no sense for Stephanie to put any of these men in the triple threat.
At the Royal Rumble match, the Authority’s goal was to prevent Roman Reigns from walking out as the WWE World Champion. Their plan succeeded and Roman lost the championship. So after all the effort with Brock Lesnar, the League of Nations and Triple H… why would they give Roman another opportunity at the title? You spent all of December and January trying to take the title off the man, and now you’re just giving him another opportunity. If you don’t want Roman Reigns to win the title, how about you just make it Dean Ambrose vs Brock Lesnar and don’t add Roman to the match?
The inclusion of Dean Ambrose also doesn’t make a lot of sense from a story-telling perspective. Dean Ambrose has been fighting the Authority since the Shield turned on Triple H. Dean has been a thorn in the Authority’s backside for the longest time. Why would they give Dean a title shot? Unless they were going to swerve us all by having Dean turn on Roman and join the Authority, it doesn’t make sense for Dean to be in this match. Even if they did have Dean turn on Roman, this would also result in the Royal Rumble ending not making any sense. If Dean were to turn Roman the whole time, why would Dean and Triple H fight each other in the Rumble when Triple H could have just eliminated himself and let Dean win?
Finally, there’s Brock Lesnar. In the storyline, it’s implied that the Authority has some kind of agreement with Brock Lesnar. I can’t say that they’re completely on the same page but Brock was willing to take out Roman for them at the Royal Rumble. However, why would the Authority want Brock to be the number one contender? Brock Lesnar would present a huge threat to Triple H’s title reign. Hell, Brock Lesnar would present a huge threat to Triple H’s well-being! After all, Brock has broken Triple H’s arm TWICE! The idea that Triple H would be happy with fighting Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania is just absurd.
The thing about Fastlane is that there were reports of the WWE wanting to make this pay-per-view a major event for WWE. They wanted to turn it into one of their A shows and an integral part of WWE’s schedule. However, it’s going to be very hard for it to be considered important when the WWE World Heavyweight Championship is not even defended. This is actually the second Fastlane pay-per-view in a row where this has happened, which really hurts those ambitions. If you want to make this event mean something, make it mean something. UFC has title defences in nearly every pay-per-view event they hold, making all of those cards special. When the WWE doesn’t have a title defence for a event, it’s making the audience think that the show is unimportant. That’s obviously not want the WWE want.
It also hurts the main event knowing that the layout of the match looks to be very predictable. You know that Brock Lesnar is probably not going to be in the WWE World title picture for Wrestlemania. Why’s that? Because he set up his Wrestlemania program with Bray Wyatt at the Royal Rumble. This is merely just a pit stop before he fights Bray. The chances are, the Wyatt Family will get involved and cause Brock the match. Dean Ambrose, being the Intercontinental Champion, is also probably not going to be in the WWE World title picture either. Therefore, by the process of elimination, we already know that Roman Reigns will probably win the match. I don’t have an issue with Roman winning but not in such a manner where I’m calling it weeks before the match happens. Maybe the WWE will swerve us at Fastlane and have Dean shockingly win but I seriously doubt it.
Dean Ambrose is probably going to be the biggest loser of all in this main event. Even though he’s getting a chance to throw down in the main event, it’s almost a certainty that Dean will be the one that gets pinned or submitted. You can’t beat Roman (who’s probably going to win) and you can’t beat Brock, so Dean has to take the bullet. It sucks to be him but that’s a huge issue with this main event. You’ve got three white-hot guys in the main event but one of them has to lose. Sadly, it’s going to be the one that hardly ever wins a big match which is going to be even more detrimental. Dean’s going to struggle if you bring him in to do these big matches and then beat them in everyone.
It’s a very risky move for WWE to give us this match at Fastlane. Don’t get me wrong, I’m probably going to love this match. I like Dean, I like Roman and I am such a fan of Brock Lesnar. These three together could put on a superb showing. However, this match does little to help WWE in the long term and it was set up in such an illogical way which makes the Authority look bad.
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