On Sunday night, WWE crowned a new Universal Champion at the Raw exclusive pay-per-view Fastlane. The main event of the card saw Goldberg fight Kevin Owens for the WWE Universal Title and in less than thirty seconds, Goldberg defeated Kevin Owens for the WWE Universal Title. This now sets up the Goldberg/Brock Lesnar match at Wrestlemania 33 to be for the WWE Universal title and unfortunately the main event of the show.
[Jon]
Right off the bat, I feel that having Goldberg winning the belt stultifies that WWE cares more about the mainstream coverage and your casual fan. For a stage like Wrestlemania, that is not the right mindset to have because you can not ignore one fan base.If WWE did care about the hardcore fan, then Kevin Owens would have retained. Also by putting the belt on Goldberg, it is a slap in the face to the RAW roster. You have several RAW wrestlers who are talented enough to hold the belt and be in the main event scene, but for some reason, Vince McMahon feels the belt will get better treatment on someone who is a part-timer and since his return to the WWE ring, has yet to take a bump at all.
More than likely this will probably lead to Goldberg dropping the belt to Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania. Unless they are going to have Lesnar drop the belt the next night to someone on the RAW roster, you won’t see that belt be defended again until SummerSlam this August. How do you expect a belt to establish any sort of credibility if you have it on a part-timer like Brock Lesnar or Goldberg?
By having Goldberg win last night, it put a stamp on a night that saw Nia Jax and Braun Strowman both suffer their first pay-per-view loss in their WWE careers. Also, WWE wanted to do better than the amazing match that happened between Kenny Omega and Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 11. By having Goldberg and Lesnar being the main event of the show, I don’t see how they have any shot of out doing the Omega/Okada match.