These Superstars Should Be Challenging Roman, Not Brock

On tonight’s episode of Smackdown we seen Brock Lesnar return to attack Roman Reigns and officially be announced for a title match at SummerSlam.

If you read the dirt sheets, this is a reactionary move due to Orton being out with back problems and not the original plan. In this sense it makes sense why they’ve made the choice but it’s also hard to ignore all the other legitimate contenders for the title.

Here’s three guys who are legitimate challengers for both world titles.

Bobby Lashley

This guy has head a great few years in terms of booking. He won the WWE World Heavyweight title in 2021 for the first time and had a very dominant reign that seen him defeat Drew McIntyre multiple times.

Lashley is currently a babyface and allegedly considered the top babyface on Raw which makes him the perfect opponent for Roman who is still currently a heel. When booked right Lashley was beating guys 2 on 1 so he’s definitely a believable threat too.

Lashley also recently finished his feud with Omos which he ended up winning and is honestly wasting his talent in this strange feud with Theory. Neither man can really afford to lose and WWE should be booking them both against people that can afford to take a loss.

Lashley was never actually pinned or submitted for the title back at Elimination Chamber and only lost it due to his shoulder issues preventing him from competing in the match. This would make it really easy to book a match between him and Roman since he’s owed a rematch.

Seth Rollins

One interesting part of the build between Roman and Seth at Royal Rumble 2022 was that Roman still hasn’t beaten Seth. Considering that match ended in a disqualification, that fact is still true.

Now booking wise Seth has had quite a few losses recently which isn’t ideal for a world title contender, but the previous point still remains true. If we were to see Seth slightly change his character to be a bit more ruthless and serious, then it wouldn’t be too hard to build him up in time for SummerSlam.

Personally I feel with Cody out injured, his acknowledgement of Cody’s ability would have been the perfect time for a face turn for Seth if he hadn’t had attacked Cody. This would have made another Roman vs Seth feud make even more sense and WWE does need some strong babyfaces.

Drew McIntyre

Although his feuds in the past 6 months haven’t been anything main event worthy in the eyes of most, Drew has been booked really strong.

In all fairness and in the defense of Drew, the SmackDown roster isn’t exactly stacked with top heels lining up for Drew to defeat. Everything has also pointed to Drew getting a title shot at the upcoming UK premium live event but you may ask why he would need a match at SummerSlam too.

I personally think in an ideal booking we could see Drew challenge Roman at SummerSlam and come up short as he shouldn’t be able to beat Roman too easily. Then a rematch at the UK premium live event could be where he finally manages to beat Roman.

This is a very typical type of booking but I’m sure if done right, it could still be really enjoyable. WWE has clearly been keeping them away from each other as long as possible so I’ll be curios to see what their plan is.

Drew is also in the MITB ladder match which he could have won the previous year so I’ll be very interested to see how he does this year.

Other Opportunities

A few very unlikely scenarios that I’d love to see would be someone like Bray Wyatt return to challenge Roman. As a previous world champion he’d be legitimate enough as a contender and there’s still a lot of fans that want to see him back.

WWE has a pretty strict formula with their booking but I’d love to see them do something different like have Bron Breakker show up to challenge Roman. Even if he loses, as long as he puts up a really good fight that makes it look like he actually stood a chance then it would be great moment for this upcoming star that wouldn’t hurt his momentum.

Last but not least there’s injured stars like Cody Rhodes and Big E. Both are nowhere near being ready to return but if they were, they’d certainly have the crowd behind them.

All we can do now is wait and see how things turn out at SummerSlam and if they actually make this match unique or a repeat of past matches.

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