For the second year in a row, the WWE entered WrestleMania season with big plans for Braun Strowman, only to cancel the plans in the home stretch. Despite pulling back on the big man two years in a row now, it seems the WWE still has big plans for Strowman. When talking on ESPN’s Cheap Heat podcast, Triple H said that there are big plans for Braun after WrestleMania 33 .
Triple H did mention that he has been busy pushing his own projects, assumedly NXT and their upcoming TakeOver event in Orlando, and he hasn’t been completely in the loop when it comes to Vince McMahon and his plans for the WWE main roster. However, he is sure that there are big things coming for Braun Strowman.
“I haven’t had that exact conversation with him. I’m imagining, though, [Braun Strowman] has got a lot of stuff behind him. I can’t imagine we’re going to just let that fall off, and, surely, that there are big plans for him on the other side. I know that.”
In 2016, the plans were for Braun Strowman to fight Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania last year, and the WWE set that up when Bray Wyatt and the Wyatt Family attacked Brock at the Royal Rumble . However, the WWE went in another direction and had Dean Ambrose fight Brock Lesnar while Braun Strowman was not even in a match, watching The Rock beat Erick Rowan in seconds.
This year, Braun Strowman had been built up as an unstoppable monster on WWE Monday Night Raw , and the word was that Roman Reigns would be the man to finally stop him at WrestleMania 33 . However, that didn’t happen either.
The John Cena vs. Undertaker match was scrapped so that Cena could team with real-life girlfriend Nikki Bella to fight Miz and Maryse. The WWE then canceled the Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns match and put Reigns against The Undertaker. To do this, they had Roman beat Strowman at a minor WWE PPV before WrestleMania 33 .
After that loss to Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman came face to face with The Undertaker, only to walk off and not fight. Then, Roman Reigns was wrestling Braun on WWE Monday Night Raw , and Undertaker came in and choke-slammed Strowman. After so much work on building up Braun, the WWE was just using him as a tool to promote Undertaker vs. Roman Reigns .
With that in mind, it seems that if Triple H is right and that the WWE wants to really do something big with Braun Strowman after WrestleMania 33 , and they will have to work on damage control. They lost the work that went into making Braun unstoppable, and that hurts his brand.
There were some false WWE rumors that indicated that Braun Strowman had done something to make Vince McMahon mad and that is why he was not longer pushed. According to Triple H, that isn’t really true; it was just something that came along with Strowman learning his way around the WWE ring.
The story is that Braun Strowman was told not to do something in the ring. The next time that Vince McMahon and Triple H were watching him, he did it again and McMahon lost it, wondering what was wrong with Braun. That is when Triple H said he came to the WWE superstar’s defense.
“I looked at him and I go, ‘Vince, it’s like his fifteenth match.’ Like, do you know what I mean? ‘He’s trying to figure out what he’s doing. He’s lucky he got in the ring today.’ And he looked right at me and he was like, ‘that’s a really great point. Never mind.’”
At the moment, there is no WWE match lined up for Braun Strowman at WrestleMania 33 , the second year in a row that has occurred. However, don’t expect that to remain true. Strowman will almost surely be involved in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and is favored to win it.
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