Vince McMahon Lost His Last Marble During The Lesnar/Goldberg Segment Last Night

Uproxx - If you watched WWE Raw on Monday night, you were probably rolling around on the floor and clutching your body in pain while watching the supremely ill-advised, interminable segment where Paul Heyman tried in desperation to get the Minnesota crowd to boo hometown hero Brock Lesnar and cheer for Goldberg. Surprise! It didn’t work.

The idea — which was pretty much dead on arrival anyway — was to get Lesnar to come out and respond to Goldberg’s big return last week. (Which was itself a response to Paul Heyman’s challenge to Goldberg the week before THAT.) WWE clearly wants Goldberg to be the returning, conquering hero in this feud, running up against big, bad Brock Lesnar. The problem is that they chose to have Lesnar come back this week and have people in Minnesota boo one of the most successful local sons in the state’s history, while the dude is wearing a special Minnesota-based version of his shirt.

On Monday night’s post-Raw edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Bryan Alvarez related the behind-the-scenes story of what was happening during that segment.

“Backstage, Vince blew a gasket, [saying] ‘These goddamn fans!’ And he played Brock’s music, and they just ended it. And Paul and Brock went to the back, and that was the end of the segment. This was not how it was supposed to end, but Vince pulled the plug right in the middle of it.”

I don’t watch as much Raw as I have in the last couple of years. For a few reasons- during football season my viewing goes down, the 3 hour show has finally caught up to me (for the 105,000th time, no television show needs 3 hours to tell a story. None.), and the product right now sucks. Again.

Now let’s go to last night. Keep in mind, Brock Lesnar hasn’t been a pure heel in a couple of years. Right after he beat Taker at Mania he was at his most heel, but even that heat didn’t stay. People love him too much. So for Vince to write a segment for Lesnar, in his home state of Minnesota, portraying him as the heal? Get the fuck out of town. How can someone who has seen it all in wrestling be that naive? How does he not understand fan reaction by now? It’s CRAZY. He does the same shit with Reigns too. He has wanted Reigns to be the babyface forever, but books him so terribly. Nothing they do makes logical sense.

When it comes down to it, as I’ve been blogging for a while, Vince simply has lost touch. He sees everything the way he saw them in the 1980’s, but the same tactics he used back then do not still work now. Trying to get Lesnar booed in Minnesota is ridiculous. Trying to get WCW guy Goldberg over him is even crazier.

And why the timing? Have Lesnar come back somewhere else. Having him on TV only once every 3 months doesn’t allow him to get proper heal heat, so it was probably going to be doomed regardless of where he re-appeared, nevermind in Minny. The whole thing stunk. At least Vince had the wherewithall to pull the plug on the segment before the “Goldberg Sucks” chants got too loud. This has to be one of the more botched story lines in quite some time. Vince has completely lost it. I guess all moguls do.

PS: Smackdown is a zillion times better, and I have been keeping up with it more than Raw for the first time in what seems like a decade. Smackdown is a fun wrestling show. Raw takes itself so seriously, and Mick Foley has gone from hardcore legend to overly-annoying GM. Thank goodness for Jericho and KO, who are carrying the show on their shoulders. Remember how good the first few episodes after the brand split were? And we thought things would change. Hah! Smackdown got the head NXT writer and boy does it show.