Brock Lesnar: The Beast’s Universal Championship Defenses Ranked

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3. Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman (No Mercy 2017)

Every time Brock Lesnar stepped in the ring in 2017, there was a glimmer of hope that the Reigns experiment was over, and his opponent in the Universal Championship match would be the one to bring the title to Raw every week. Based on what he had done to that point in his career, Braun Strowman seemed to be the most likely candidate.

Between WrestleMania 33 and No Mercy, Strowman was on a one man quest to eviscerate Roman Reigns. Ambulances were flipped over and everything. And at every turn, no matter how much punishment Strowman had inflicted on Reigns, or how much Reigns had managed to hurt Strowman, Braun was never finished with Reigns.

This path of destruction led to a handful of Universal Championship matches for Strowman, including this singles match. And, man, was it disappointing. (Seems to be a running theme of this list, no?)

When you think of Braun Strowman, you think of unstoppable monster, right? It should require a ton of devastating maneuvers to keep a superstar like him down for a three count. And yes, Strowman basically no-sold Lesnar’s vicious German suplex, but it took a single F-5 to end the match.

The writing on the wall told us that the whole point of a single F-5 ending Strowman for the night was to make the inevitable Reigns kickout from one seem like a miracle. Sadly, it also began to spell the beginning of the end of Strowman as a monster. Since No Mercy, he’s tag teamed with a child, and resorted to more cartoonish forms of violence.