Throwback: Brock Lesnar vs Braun Strowman, No Mercy 2017

Analysis on Lesnar v Strowman at No Mercy 2017, along with insights on how WWE can book Oba Femi v Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 42

I missed this match when I was growing up because I really didn’t care for Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar. I was a Finn Balor and Rey Mysterio guy. I loved the NXT: Black and Gold era with guys like  Aleister Black, Johnny Gargano, and Andrade. That was my type of wrestling, so this type of big man movement didn’t appeal to me. But as I grew older, I also saw the beauty in titan wrestling. Specifically, I saw the beauty in Brock Lesnar‘s style of wrestling and his in-ring psychology.

Brock Lesnar‘s ability to make smaller opponents look good while simultaneously making himself look like the ultimate villain and the absolute Beast Incarnate won me over. So I went back and watched this match, and I thought it would be a good preparation before his match with Oba Femi (which I really hope Oba wins), wanting a good measure of how exactly Brock likes to work with big men. 

The match was kind of sloppy after the first two minutes or so, with Braun dominating most of it as I assume they didn’t plan on fleshing the story out. It was like when Brock worked with Omos, they opted for a simple storyline: Brock is a monster, but there are taller and bigger monsters. The appeal came in Brock being in a rare underdog role. 

Brock took a hefty amount of damage and it was similar to most of what I saw in the match with Omos, except it was more enjoyable because Strowman was an athletic freak. When Braun ran at you, it was scary not only because of his size, but because of the speed in which he came at you leaving no time to react. He also had a lot more charisma than most big men. 

However, in my opinion, it’s not very enjoyable to watch Brock selling for most of the match or when he’s building up to a monster comeback. The reason being is because it ruins the allure of the Beast Incarnate. Brock is an amazing seller, but he can go overboard with his facial expressions.

That’s why I preferred when he fought smaller guys like Styles, Balor, Mysterio, or Bryan because those matches believably only allowed for short bursts of Brock selling, and shorter timeframes are the best for it. If you do it for too long, it loses both the surprise element and the emotional chain created when seeing the overpowered villain surprisingly get taken down. Even though we expect Brock to win, we live for the small moments of hope inside of professional wrestling. That’s what makes peak Brock matches so encapsulating, like when Styles got him in the calf crusher, or when Rey and Dominick Mysterio hit double frog splashes on him. For just a second, we believed they could win. You lose that when he eats offense for five minutes straight.

The match featured a lot of grappling and striking, which could have been enjoyable if Brock wrestled or went blow to blow with Braun. Instead, Strowman manhandled Brock for a few minutes, quickly burnt out the surprise of “Brock Lesnar is getting manhandled”, and then Brock ended the match with one F5.

I liked the athletic feats of Strowman, I liked the concept of Brock selling, but I did not enjoy the execution whatsoever.

Since Oba and Brock are level height, WWE doesn’t have to play this way. With the two, you can actually play more of a striking battle, a preview of which was evident at their brawl during the RAW contract singing. Brock is an elite striker with his MMA experience, he knows exactly when to time and release his elbows, forearms, hammer fists, and clotheslines.

You can have the two wrestle and try to take each other down, with full mount punches and side knee strikes coming on the ground towards the end of the match when both fatigue and emotional magnitude are high. Hard hitting strikes also allow for higher intensity and that’ll make Brock’s signature German Suplexes hit harder, since that means they won’t be oversaturated.

Although the match itself wasn’t that great, the beauty of professional wrestling is that there is something to learn even in failure. And in this case, even this Lesnar v Strowman match from 8 years ago can offer insight into one of the biggest WrestleMania matches ever coming up next weekend.

Final rating: 6/10