Last night at Survivor Series, Brock Lesnar defeated AJ Styles in a `Champion vs. Champion` match.This was actually a last-minute booking. The original plan was to have Brock Lesnar fight Jinder Mahal, but a number of factors colluded to kill that. The fans, by and large, hated the idea. They widely perceive Mahal as a transitional WWE champion, who only attained his spot because WWE has a growing Indian audience; Mahal possesses an Indo-Canadian background. Prior to his championship run, Mahal was losing to the likes of Mojo Rawley, Darren Young, Curtis Axel, and R-Truth; even in the scripted world of professional wrestling, there`s a limit to what fans will swallow. The storylines don`t have to be realistic, necessarily, but they need to adhere to their own internal logic.Paul Heyman, Lesnar`s manager, alluded to this dissonance in his October 23 promo, when he buried Jinder Mahal under six feet of rhetoric. `You`re not even a worthy pretender to the throne!` Heyman bellowed at the Raw audience. Soon after that, Mahal dropped the WWE championship, and AJ Styles, the man who won it from him, was slotted in Mahal`s place at Survivor Series. Lesnar and Mahal only had a week to plan out their confrontation. Complicating matters, Lesnar has a reputation for `laziness,` depending on his opponent; Dean Ambrose had to twist Lesnar`s arm to get him to perform at WrestleMania 32. And prior to last night, Lesnar hadn`t delivered a match worthy of his notoriety since WrestleMania 31, almost three years ago. So as good as the match looked on paper, it could have easily devolved into a `Suplex City` match--nothing but German suplexes for 10 tedious minutes--if Lesnar had decided to phone it in.But that didn`t happen--at all! What happened is that Styles and Lesnar had the best match of the evening, and possibly the best WWE match of the year. When he`s mentally present, Lesnar can still deliver. And AJ Styles brought out the best in him.The match started as all Lesnar match ...
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