WWE Ruining Appeal of Potential Seth Rollins-Brock Lesnar Bout with Poor Booking

By the time Brock Lesnar comes back looking to insert his fangs into Seth Rollins' flesh, he is likely to find the WWE champion a withered, weakened version of himself.

WWE's persistence on having Rollins play the bumbling, hapless heel doesn't just hurt his title reign—it sucks the energy out of a potential Rollins-Lesnar clash at SummerSlam. Monday's Raw was the latest clear example of that.

Rollins demanded that he go it alone for once.

That meant no Kane in his corner. That meant no assistance from Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. It also meant that instead of having J&J Security provide distractions and cheap shots, they would serve as his warm-up opponents.

It looked like an excellent idea from a narrative standpoint. WWE would have Rollins show himself to be dangerous independent of all his allies. He could throttle Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury, his faithful stooges, to get ready to face Dean Ambrose at Money in the Bank.

Rollins hadn't done nearly enough throttling beforehand. Rather than showcase Rollins' vicious side, though, WWE went with a head-scratcher move: a pair of semi-retired goons who are often mocked on-air for being short defeated him.

Sure, it took a distraction from Ambrose to lead to that result, but in the end, the image fans will take away from this night is Mercury rolling the world champ up and getting the three-count.

That's miles away from the Rollins who outsmarted Lesnar and Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 31, who jumped into the battle between two monsters and walked away the champion.

When Lesnar challenged Rollins the next night (for a match that never happened), electricity crackled in the air. A fox was set to fight a bear.

Rollins' last memorable act at that time had been him stomping Reigns' head into the mat. He was an opportunist and a man who forced his foes to keep their eyes open at all times.

In a few months, that has changed.

WWE has focused too much on making Rollins cowardly without offering him moments of viciousness to counterbalance that. With as anticipated as that title match was, WWE should have spent Rollins' reign building him up as so cunning, ruthless and athletic that he had a chance to somehow overcome Lesnar.

That has not been the case at all.

Instead, Rollins is now 7-9 since becoming champ, per CageMatch.net. One of those wins came against Kane because the big man chose to lay flat on his back and let the referee count to three. Rollins struggled to put the rookie Neville away. He has been unable to get the upper hand on Ambrose.

Credit: WWE.com

And Rollins just barely escaped his match at Elimination Chamber with the title thanks to a technicality.

It's fine to have the heel have close calls and narrow wins. That's how one makes it seem like the babyface is just on the verge of dethroning him.

Still, he also has to create moments that show that even though he is on the run and scurrying into any available corner, he will indeed bite and leave a mark. There hasn't been nearly enough of that during Rollins' reign.

Before he won the title, he crushed Ambrose's head against cinder blocks, he thrashed Randy Orton, putting out of action for months, he threatened to break a man's neck on live TV.

Where has that Rollins been? That's a man who could find a way to stop the unstoppable, to beat The Beast Incarnate.

As is stands, there is no reason to buy that Rollins can win against Lesnar. That will feel like a one-sided match rather than a collision of two titans of very different varieties. It's no longer Edge vs. Batista; it's Jimmy Wang Yang vs. Batista.

At Money in the Bank, Rollins doesn't just need to keep the title—he needs another memorable act of violence to plant in fans' minds. 

If WWE has any plans on booking Lesnar vs. Rollins down the road, the current champ needs to avoid falling to the likes of J&J Security. He needs to be his pre-WrestleMania self again, to start swinging a sharpened sword rather than a rubber one.