When Brock Lesnar beat Bill Goldberg for the WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania 33 , the biggest WWE rumors indicated that Lesnar would hold the title for a full year and not lose it until WrestleMania 34 in 2018. However, with Lesnar as a part-time star, some fans wondered if that could be true. Lesnar won’t have his first title defense until July at Great Balls of Fire , indicating that the WWE might be serious about this.
On Wrestling Observer Radio , wrestling insider Dave Meltzer talked about the Brock Lesnar Universal Championship plans, and he revealed the names of the contenders to the title that will take Brock Lesnar through to WrestleMania 34 .
The next match for Brock Lesnar is going to be in July at Great Balls of Fire , and right now, WWE rumors indicate that Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman will fight in an Ambulance Match at Extreme Rules to determine who faces Brock Lesnar at that pay-per-view event.
Braun Stowman is rumored to win that match and will become the first contender Brock Lesnar defends his WWE Universal Championship title against at Great Balls of Fire . That will mean Brock Lesnar will hold the title for three months before defending it for the first time.
The next title defense will come much sooner. Brock Lesnar is scheduled to wrestle at SummerSlam in August. There is no word on who he will fight during that show, but Dave Meltzer says Seth Rollins and Finn Balor will fight Lesnar over the next year at some point.
The final name that is locked in to fight Brock Lesnar is Roman Reigns, but that won’t come until WrestleMania 34 . Paul Heyman already planted the seeds for this match by saying The Undertaker only lost two matches at WrestleMania over the years, and they were to Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar.
Paul Heyman wants Lesnar and Reigns to fight to determine who the better man is, and WrestleMania is the obvious spot for that match since it is based on The Undertaker and his WrestleMania record.
The idea is that heading into WrestleMania 34 , Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman will finally end their feud, with Reigns coming out on top in the end. That could happen soon, either at SummerSlam or one of the other big WWE pay-per-view events such as Survivor Series or The Royal Rumble .
While Brock Lesnar is not openly booked for any shows after SummerSlam , expect him to be at The Royal Rumble and possibly even Survivor Series . Between those two and SummerSlam , there is a good chance that Brock Lesnar could fight Seth Rollins and Finn Balor at two of them and then maybe a multi-man title match at another, with possibly Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman both involved while keeping Brock and Roman from pinning each other.
While those are the Big 4 WWE pay-per-view events, Dave Meltzer said that Brock Lesnar will work more dates in this Universal Championship run than he did in his last WWE world title run, which lasted seven months. That means there might be a surprise contender or two for Lesnar (such as Bray Wyatt), although a 12-month run would obviously make Brock work more shows than a seven-month run.
Regardless of who Brock Lesnar defends his title against over the next year, his Universal Championship run will cause problems for the Monday Night Raw brand. They have an exclusive pay-per-view almost every month, and the first two since WrestleMania 33 didn’t include their biggest champion.
Unless Brock Lesnar really picks up his schedule over the next 10 months, the WWE won’t see it’s top champion on television, and the WWE will have to cover his absence in any way that they can during that time.
[Featured Image by WWE]