As I’m sure anyone who watched Super Showdown knows, we have a new Universal Champion. No, he’s not a full-time member of the active roster. He’s a 53 year old man who’s in the Hall of Fame and has visible difficulty hitting his finisher these days. The Universal Championship match between The Fiend and Goldberg at Super Showdown showcased a lot of valuable lessons, most of them bad. However, I believe the most prominent lesson learned was how important building a popular character early is crucial.
We all remember where we were when The Fiend debuted at Summerslam. We saw The Fiend literally have the entire arena shook with a masterful remix of Broken Out of Love, the new gear and the sheer terror what was invoked by his presence. He dominated Finn Balor with ease and that was that. WWE literally could not have written The Fiend’s debut any better. However, it didn’t take them long at all to take a complete 180.
After Balor, The Fiend’s next adversary was Seth Rollins, and he challenged him for the Universal Championship inside Hell In a Cell. For those of you who saw that match, I’m sure that you can agree that it was one of the worst world title matches in WWE history. I’m still trying to conceive in my mind how you can end a Hell In a Cell match in a disqualification for being too violent. That aside, let’s address the big issue that WWE was setting themselves up for in that match.
For all intents and purposes, Rollins dominated the offense in that match, but nothing was working. The Fiend took what had to be an endless procession of Curb Stomps, followed by a sledgehammer with a chair to the FACE. Was that enough to defeat him? No. In fact, he was just fine and no sold everything after. So it was clear that he was fine. Then, in their rematch at Crown Jewel, Rollins proceeded to attempt murder on The Fiend by shoving him off the stage and into equipment. Of course, that was not enough either.
Fast forward to Super Showdown (if you didn’t see my review of the show, click here).The Fiend has since established that nothing short of going over the top will give you at least a 2 count. Goldberg remembers that 3 years ago he held the Universal Title for 4 weeks and didn’t get a rematch. That’s the precise moment Kevin Owens threw his remote at the television. Anyways, he is rewarded a title match because he wants one. What was the key to defeating The Fiend? The same one who supposedly causes psychological trauma by turning Rollins, Miz and Balor heel? Was it an endless supply of finishers? Was it shoving him off the top of the arena? Or maybe just catching him by surprise?
It turns out Goldberg had the answer all along. The key was 5 spears and a Jackhammer (it was actually a half-assed vertical suplex, but I’m being nice). Yep, that’s all it took to defeat The Fiend all of a sudden. What explanation did we get as to how the supposedly impervious powers of The Fiend get thwarted? Did he intentionally throw the match? He was no-selling and staring Goldberg down after the match was done, after all. No, he just lost, I guess. The ending of that match created more questions than answers, and I suppose that leaves us back to square one with Bray Wyatt.
We all fell in love with Wyatt’s re-invention. Whenever we saw Firefly Fun House, we didn’t know what to expect, and we didn’t know what the point was. Yet, there lies the fun. It was different, and while different isn’t always better, it does spark conversation. Wyatt somehow made it work, and I believed he worked very hard to sell The Fiend as this otherworldly demon with incredible powers. So how did we get to this point? Well, a retrospective would tell us that his seemingly invulnerability was also his worst quality.
We all knew that The Fiend wasn’t going to hold the championship forever. However, the moment WWE gave him the title, it created a conundrum. Through his matches with Rollins, it was clear that whoever defeated The Fiend basically had to resort to damn near lethal measures to win. That’s what makes Goldberg’s victory so hollow and disappointing. The internal consistency and story that WWE was trying to convey to us was essentially wiped away for the sake of getting what would be perceived as a bigger WrestleMania match.
Now, let’s be clear here. Goldberg winning the Universal Championship before WrestleMania isn’t the problem here. We’ve gone through this in 2017, and with WWE’s looming unpopular PPV deal with ESPN, it’s clear they will want to stack the deck. To me, Roman Reigns vs. Goldberg for the Universal Championship is an infinitely better idea in theory than it is in practice. We can’t keep expecting Golberg to work these kinds of matches. It’s getting to the point where even the sprints are getting kind of uninspired. Also, asking Roman to carry a 53 year old Goldberg to something presentable is kind of unfair.
WWE attempted to save face by having The Fiend just stand there looking like a complete idiot after the match. That only compounded matters because it shows that they were actually consistent in that regard. That consistency being Bray’s no-selling of his opponent’s offense. So why didn’t he kick out? They of course didn’t explain this in any way and just had Bray quickly move onto John Cena. Just like that.
I know WWE thinks a lot of its fanbase is stupid, and perhaps we are for expecting that WWE would have any logical explanation. Oh, by the way did you know that Goldberg’s victory got 850,000 likes on Instagram? Sure, the YouTube clip of Goldberg spearing Wyatt four times has a 23,000 to 31,000 like to dislike ratio, but who’s counting?
So, here we stand. What should have been an interesting payoff to The Fiend’s gimmick ends in a lazy excuse to get Goldberg onto the WrestleMania card. No superstar ever discovered a weakness that they could exploit from The Fiend. All of his adversaries were never able to go over the edge and come out on top. Goldberg had the answer the entire time.
Again, I’d like to stress that I’m not mad over The Fiend losing the title. How he lost and the explanation we’re given is just so disheartening. I find it funny that we were told not too long ago that we were The Authority and that the fans would get what they want. How well has WWE lived up to that claim since then, I wonder?
As for The Fiend, there’s a re-hash of WrestleMania 30 looming on the horizon, so I suppose it could be worse. However, as has often been with the case with Bray, something that seems inspiring ends up being another case of “should of, would of, could of”, but ending flat. Unfortunately, that’s the story of Bray Wyatt’s career so far. Great potential, and the ride is great, but the ending is always unsatisfying.
What did you think of The Fiend’s Universal Title reign? Did WWE set him up for failure from the jump, or were you never into his gimmick to begin?
