Major Spoiler On Plans For Brock Lesnar And The WWE Championship

WWE is making several big changes to top WrestleMania 36 matches for the SmackDown brand, but plans for Raw’s biggest stars appear to be set in stone.

While once planned matches for major stars like John Cena, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt and Goldberg are now up in the air, WWE is moving forward with big booking moves for the top stars on the Monday nights. According to WrestlingNews.co’s Paul Davis, Drew McIntyre is expected to defeat Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 36 and feud with Seth Rollins over the WWE Championship later this year:

A WWE source told me that the plan is for Drew McIntyre to win the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar and there are already plans in place for McIntyre’s post-Mania feuds and Seth Rollins is one the names planned for the summer.

It was noted that Vince McMahon is a big supporter of McIntyre and badly wants him to the win title from Lesnar:

“The source said the following about McIntyre: ‘Vince likes everything about him and thinks he represents the company well when he does media appearances. He looks good and talks good and that is what Vince is looking for. Drew has already established a relationship with Vince like most top guys do.’ Barring an injury, the same source told me that Vince is set on McIntyre winning the title and that it is very unlikely that he will change his mind on this one.”

Both McMahon and Triple H are well known supporters of McIntyre, but that hasn’t prevented McIntyre from being plagued by start-and-stop pushes since he returned to WWE’s main roster in April 2018. Even though McIntyre has been one of WWE’s most believable and well-rounded performers over the past two years, it wasn’t until late last year that WWE truly began pushing McIntyre to the main event level that many fans felt he should have been at long ago.

McIntyre’s suddenly massive push likely came about for a couple of reasons. One, McIntyre demonstrated with his positive effect on Raw viewership that he has the makings of a potential draw for the red brand—with the right booking, that is. Two, there was a lack of other intriguing-but-realistic options for Lesnar on Raw because “The Beast” has already feuded with top acts like Rollins and AJ Styles while other rising stars on Raw don’t really make a believable foe for Lesnar as of yet. WWE had considered doing Aleister Black vs. Lesnar at WrestleMania 36 but ultimately decided against it, largely because McIntyre was better positioned as a realistic and slightly more popular opponent for “The Beast.”

Based on crowd reaction, McIntyre is indeed the right choice to dethrone Lesnar, who will likely disappear from WWE programming after WrestleMania 36 the way he typically does following WrestleMania each year.

Of course, WWE will then face an uphill battle in trying to have McIntyre remain as over as he is without the crowd turning on him the way it typically does with strongly pushed babyfaces, a la Rollins and Roman Reigns before him. That being said, that doesn’t make the expected decision to crown McIntyre as the WWE Champion a bad one. Lesnar, after all, is one of a select few superstars in WWE—maybe the only superstar?—with the type of massive star power that can help transform a once poorly booked star like McIntyre into a household name.

McIntyre vs. Lesnar should be the actual main event of WrestleMania 36, and it should also serve as a showcase for McIntyre that firmly cements him as a perennial main eventer. Heading into the summer months on Raw, McIntyre should be a dominant champion who feuds with the biggest heels on the red brand, but it isn’t clear if or when that planned feud with Rollins will actually happen. WWE is widely expected to host another Superstar Shkeup or Draft following WrestleMania 36 at least in part to boost its often struggling TV viewership, and it’s possible that the changes made to Raw and SmackDown may finally send Rollins—who’s spent his entire career on Raw—to SmackDown for the first time.

In addition, Rollins reportedly could be taking an extended hiatus from WWE at some point following WrestleMania 36, which might throw a wrench into WWE’s post-Mania plans. While it’s difficult to envision Rollins taking time off so soon after his heel turn, that might benefit “The Architect” in the long run because his short stint as a villain hasn’t been booked all that effectively while he’s also already recently feuded with McIntyre, albeit with the heel and babyface roles reversed. With Rollins dominating the world title picture on Raw for much of 2019, it would be best to keep him away from the title scene for the foreseeable future.

With Raw also now serving as the go-to place for WWE’s up-and-coming stars, perhaps Paul Heyman and the red brand’s creative team will consider giving someone like Andrade or another rising heel a shot at McIntyre. What seems more likely, though, is that WWE will utilize an established heel, someone like the loathed Randy Orton, as a post-Mania foe for McIntyre.

Regardless, it appears that WWE is inent on elevating McIntyre with a massive WWE Championship win at WrestleMania that will position him for a long reign and major feuds with stars like Rollins in the spring and summer months.

Is that enough to make fans consistently tune into Raw? We shall see.