There is a very specific type of exhaustion that only modern WWE can produce.
Not the physical exhaustion from watching six hours of weekly programming. That part stopped mattering years ago once wrestling fans collectively agreed sleep was optional and emotional coherence was apparently for cowards.
No, this is franchise exhaustion. The feeling of seeing the same emergency glass smashed over and over whenever the company panics slightly about momentum, ratings, ticket movement or the terrifying concept of building new stars patiently.
Which brings us back to Brock Lesnar in 2026.
Again.
Do we really need a Brock Lesnar reboot in 2026?
Because honestly, I thought we had already done the ending.
The boots in the ring. The gloves abandoned on the canvas. The tears with Paul Heyman. The brutal loss to Oba Femi at WrestleMania 42. Four minutes and forty-two seconds of violent clarity where WWE finally seemed prepared to admit something it has spent twenty years avoiding:
Father Time eventually German suplexes everybody.
And it worked.
That was the shocking part.
Oba Femi looked enormous. Not just physically. Spiritually. The kind of wrestler who makes the entire arena feel slightly smaller simply by existing inside it. Lesnar walking into that match felt like watching an ageing apex predator realise the forest has quietly produced something worse.
Triple H described it best afterwards when he said Brock had “run into a brick wall” and recognised something that could not be stopped.
Exactly.
That should have been the story.
The old monster passes the torch to the new monster. Wrestling survives. Everybody moves on. Roll credits. Queue emotional video package narrated by somebody speaking like they’re describing the collapse of the Roman Empire through a fog machine.
The Brock Lesnar Jack in the Box
Instead, I’m sitting watching Monday Night Raw from 18 May wondering why WWE has suddenly decided to crank the handle on the Brock Lesnar Jack in the Box again.
And yes, the Jack in the Box metaphor absolutely stays.
Because Brock Lesnar’s post-2004 WWE career has basically been that toy.
You know the one. The crank turning endlessly while you sit there waiting for the same thing to leap out again. As a child, it felt exciting. Slightly dangerous. The anticipation mattered more than the actual result.
As an adult, you mostly just wonder why you’re still turning the handle.
Lesnar has been a part-time wrestler since losing to Goldberg at WrestleMania XX in 2004. If I’m being completely honest, I would not have cared if that had been the end of his WWE career altogether.
His second run has always felt structurally bizarre to me. Massive title reigns achieved through minimal appearances. Entire rosters frozen in narrative carbonite waiting for Brock to arrive once every few months looking like a farmer who accidentally wandered into a televised homicide.
And yes, before the replies arrive carrying pitchforks and Cagematch ratings, I know there were good moments.
The UFC run was undeniably impressive even if I have absolutely no emotional connection to American football, which still feels less like sport and more like a committee meeting interrupted by occasional collisions. He succeeded there. Fair play.
The Japan stuff had value too. That match with Kurt Angle in New Japan Pro-Wrestling was genuinely excellent.
But WWE kept bringing him back like a Netflix sitcom character audiences supposedly cannot live without. In and out the revolving door endlessly. Leave. Return. Leave. Return. Suplex City. Scream at camera. Cash gigantic cheque. Repeat until heat death of universe.
And now here we are again.
Oba Femi Should Have Been the Story
Oba Femi’s open challenge on Raw should have been about Oba Femi.
That’s the maddening thing.
Instead, Lesnar appears from nowhere and blindsides him because Brock apparently still does not get paid enough for television matches. Proper contests are reserved for Premium Live Events only. Television is merely the advert.
Four F-5s later and suddenly we are back inside the same storyline we already resolved less than two months ago.
Why?
Seriously. Why?
Because if this is about TKO wanting a ratings spike, fair enough, I understand the corporate logic. Wrestling has always been addicted to nostalgia. Modern WWE especially behaves like a casino slot machine programmed by people who think the Attitude Era was a religious awakening.
But creatively, it feels deeply unnecessary.
Oba Femi does not need Brock Lesnar anymore.
In fact, I would argue Brock needs Oba far more than Oba needs Brock.
That WrestleMania squash loss was one of the few genuinely effective pieces of monster-building WWE has produced in years. Femi neutralised Lesnar so completely that the audience briefly forgot Brock’s entire mythological aura. That is incredibly difficult to do.
And now WWE risks diluting it immediately.
WWE Already Has Better Options
Especially because there are other options sitting right there.
Move Solo Sikoa to Raw and let Oba fight through the Bloodline machine. There’s substance there. Chaos. Actual weekly storytelling.
Use CM Punk. Punk orbiting around Oba sounds infinitely fresher than reheating Brock Lesnar leftovers again. Even a reluctant alliance between them would at least feel unpredictable.
Or give me Bron Breakker against Oba Femi. Two genetically engineered human battering rams trying to cave each other’s ribcages in every Monday night. That feels modern. Dangerous. Alive.
Hell, even Braun Strowman lumbering back into the picture makes more sense than endlessly reopening Brock’s cryogenic pod.
Because at least those are full-time wrestlers.
That part matters.
Kit Wilson’s weird little mini-feud with Oba honestly had more soul than this current Lesnar reboot because both wrestlers actually had to live inside the rivalry every week. They sold it. They carried it. They made it feel like part of the ecosystem rather than a celebrity guest appearance parachuted in from another dimension.
Brock Lesnar No Longer Feels Like Wrestling
And that is really the core issue with Brock Lesnar in modern WWE.
He no longer feels like part of wrestling.
He feels like an event rental.
A premium attraction unlocked briefly whenever WWE starts feeling nervous about the present.
Which becomes even stranger once you factor in the enormous cultural discomfort surrounding his return. The Janel Grant and Vince McMahon lawsuit still hangs heavily over everything connected to WWE’s current leadership era. Lesnar being quietly removed from television, from marketing, even from WWE 2K24 for a period, genuinely made it feel like the company was preparing for permanent separation.
Then SummerSlam 2025 happened and the crowd exploded anyway.
That contradiction now follows him everywhere.
Inside arenas, Brock Lesnar is still treated like wrestling’s ultimate final boss. Outside them, discourse around him often feels cold, uneasy and deeply divided.
So this comeback does not even carry clean nostalgia anymore.
It carries tension.
Turn the Crank Again
Maybe WWE believes that tension is useful business.
Maybe they’re right.
But watching Raw this week mostly left me feeling like I was staring at an old toy somebody keeps forcing back into my hands insisting it still works exactly the same way it did twenty years ago.
Turn the crank.
Wait for the jump scare.
Pretend to be amazed.
At some point though, you stop reacting to the Jack in the Box and start noticing how tired the mechanism sounds.
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