By Nicholas Jason Lopez

* Graphic by Emmanuel Gonzalez * 

If you’ve been following WWE since WrestleMania, one moment plays in the head of many: the one defining moment of the year thus far.

In the middle of the WrestleMania main event between defending Champion Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins’ music hit and he hustled his way to become the new Champion via the Money In The Bank briefcase, not even pinning Lesnar to win the Championship.

The night after on Raw saw a turn of Lesnar/Paul Heyman to babyface and chaos ensued when he didn’t get the rematch owed to him, causing a storyline suspension.

While Lesnar has been absent, the key has been building Rollins as a credible heel WWE Champion. While they have mostly succeeded on that front with him beating guys like Randy Orton, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose multiple times, it’s been all about waiting for Lesnar’s comeback where the “right thing” would be to see Lesnar win it back.

This would’ve been a perfect and worthy SummerSlam main event, but WWE jumped the gun about a month early. We’d complain about the buildup, but there’s nothing bad about it, in how Lesnar has systematically taken out all of Rollins’ allies he worked hard to get back.

Battleground should be where we see Lesnar gain the ultimate revenge. The question is will he or won’t he.

The rest of the card is passable and we’ll run through everything below.

 
– Pre-Show –

– Fight For The Crown – King Barrett vs. R-Truth: Now since Barrett has won the King Of The Ring accolade, it’s done more harm to him than good. Truth has been marching around with his own Royal robe, complete with a plunger scepter. The absurdity of it all was sort of cute at first, but it’s way run its course. The two have since took part in pointless match after pointless match. It was only a matter of time before the two would fight for the crown. At this point, Barrett might as well lose and do away with this King gimmick once and for all. Truth could be semi-intriguing as King anyway. With a meaningless accolade like that, doesn’t matter what happens here. It’s just about doing less damage to Barrett.

Prediction: R-Truth

The Card 
– Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt: It started when Wyatt attacked Reigns and prevented him from winning Money In The Bank. In addition, he played mind games with his daughter and introduced us to the weirdest tea party in history. The memes haven’t stopped. Sure – a feud like this is something new, but it feeds into Creative’s problems with Wyatt that will only continue here. The guy may get the mental advantage and a big promo, but when the time comes for the big match, he falls short. This is what his character is notorious for. So with that in mind, what is supposed to make us believe any different will happen with this feud with Reigns? One particular thing. Reigns has gotten all the momentum back in the feud by pounding Wyatt on this past Raw and then standing tall at the end of Smackdown after he cost him another chance to win a match. This spells “long-term feud,” so for the sake of things, we’re going to hope Wyatt gets the early advantage. Reigns will likely win the “war” though.

Prediction: Bray Wyatt
– WWE Tag Team Championship – The Prime Time Players (Champions) vs. The New Day: So, with the unfortunate fall of Cesaro/Tyson Kidd as a team and New Day as dominant heel champions, conventional wisdom would tell you to build up Lucha Dragons until they’re ready to take the belts off them. WWE Creative however saw something in the Prime Time Players (we think it had something more to do with Titus O’Neil winning that Father Of The Year award) to give them the Titles. Now, PTP on top is fine as long as they stay away from the campy lame comedy and we cringed when that was all they did, but shockingly, they’ve begun to settle in as serious, fighting Champs. The problem here though is that an act like New Day thrives on bragging and to do that, they need the Belts back. This seems like a long-term feud with no other teams really on the radar other than Lucha Dragons, so we think New Day will regain the Belts at SummerSlam, but as for Battleground, we see PTP holding it down.

Prediction: The Prime Time Players

– Randy Orton vs. Sheamus: WWE just can’t get these two guys away from each other, can they? This wouldn’t be a bad thing if the feud was something new and exciting for both parties, but that just can’t be said here. On one hand, Orton could use a credible victory to keep his name hot in the World Title picture. On the other, Sheamus has had almost no momentum going for him since winning the Money In The Bank briefcase. True – WWE has protected him plenty on TV, but there’s just something else missing from this heel Sheamus. Couple that with the rumors that Sheamus is supposed to cash in and win successfully (against whom?) and it’s almost scary. A Sheamus-Rollins or Sheamus-Lesnar feud just doesn’t scream “big seller.” Whomever WWE goes with here, it won’t matter. They’ve essentially set up a “pick your poison” situation. For Sheamus’ sake, we can hope he wins this match and starts to really ride a wave of momentum, because if he’s going up the card to the caliber of talent like Rollins and Lesnar, he’s going to need it.

Prediction: Sheamus

– United States Championship – John Cena (Champion) vs. Kevin Owens: If there’s one thing WWE fans should be thankful for in 2015, it’s the fact that they’ve been in a front-row seat to the immediate rise of one Owens on the main roster. Not only can the big guy cut a scathing promo, but he’s shown us multiple times that he can go in the ring and fly around with the best of ’em. This feud with Cena has been an utter blessing because if you think about it, both characters are a respective foil for the other. Cena’s Open Challenges on Raw have been many a highlight for quality wrestling (oh, the irony in that) but we wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Now, they’ve torn the house down twice now with their last two matches and we can expect more of the same. With the triple threat Intercontinental Championship match now on the shelf, we can hope they give more time to this match. In terms of storyline direction, Owens has lost some momentum since losing the NXT Championship to Finn Balor in Japan, but he’s in a position to take a main roster Championship. This is the night it happens. It simply has to. Owens is a guy with all the potential in the world right now and is even in talks of going up higher on the card by officials. This win will give him the ultimate credibility. We can probably see something along the lines of a fatal four-way at SummerSlam also involving Rusev and Cesaro, which could further cement Owens if he wins that, but in order for all that to go down the correct way, he needs to win the Championship here.

Prediction: Kevin Owens

– WWE World Heavyweight Championship – Seth Rollins (Champion) vs. Brock Lesnar (w/Paul Heyman): Now, we touched up a lot on the backstory of this feud at the very top of the post, but we’ll take the time here to address why Lesnar should be the one to take the Belt. The Raw after WrestleMania pretty much set the stage for this. He has to end the story right and come away as Champion again. Everything he’s been built up for upon his return will go to waste if he doesn’t win this match. It made more sense to do it for SummerSlam, but the rumors are that they rushed it a month earlier to be able to turn Rollins face for a possible Shield reunion or feud with Triple H. Either way, we see Trips turning on Rollins once he loses the Championship. Just a matter of time. There’s many different creative directions that WWE can go in after this point, but it all needs to start with Rollins losing the belt. With his reign, the one guy people can actually believe will beat him is Lesnar. After that, who is left? It’s the marquee match and should be a hell of a bout regardless. We just hope WWE sticks to their guns and goes by Lesnar going further. Suplex City may very well become the new United States Capital.

Prediction: Brock Lesnar