Brock Lesnar Disposes of Braun Strowman to Retain Title at No Mercy

One of the most anticipated big man title matches finally happened Sunday night at WWE No Mercy. It was, in a word, disappointing.

Though there was a lot of anticipating for the match, especially since there seemed to be an outside shot we may finally have a new WWE Universal Champion, we were instead treated to more of the same. Lesnar executed less than ten (five?) moves during the match, and Strowman had his offense ruled in-effective by the reigning champion.

Strowman started off the early part of the match working over Lesnar. After an early German suplex from Brock, Strowman came back with some offense of his own, including the running powerslam for a near fall.

Strowman was bleeding from the face, and the camera zoomed in to show the cut. Even so, he continued working over Lesnar on the outside of the ring, ramming Brock into the ring post. Michael Cole noted that Lesnar’s entire offense to this point was “one right hand and one German suplex.”

They went back into the ring, with Brock eventually working his way back into the match with a Kimura lock. He held the submission for quite a while until Strowman escaped via a rope break and followed that up with a big spinebuster.

Brock countered with a series of German suplexes, bringing his total move count for the bout up to three. This was quickly countered by another Strowman comeback, resulting in two running powerslams and a near fall.

After Braun hesitated, he walked into an F-5 and a pinfall. We’re not making that up. That was literally the finish. The match ended completely out of nowhere with that F-5. Lesnar with the completely clean victory over the biggest up and coming star on the RAW roster (Strowman currently has the number one selling t-shirt on the WWE Shop).

There’s no way we can sugar coat this one. The main event was extremely disappointing. There was a lot of hype coming into the bout and it definitely did not deliver. Why beat your best contender on RAW clean like that? And why have Braun lose from exactly one F-5 after Lesnar kicked out of three running powerslams?

After we get done scratching our heads from the finish of that match, we’ll have to move on to wondering where we go from here for the next PPV. Our first reaction is that it’s never been more clear that Reigns/Lesnar is still the plan for WrestleMania and there is zero chance Brock is dropping the title before we get there.