When Will Oba Femi Win His First WWE Championship?

Oba Femi is the first "next big thing" who actually feels like the next big thing. 

All due respect to the other supposed next big things, of course, but Femi is the first since Brock Lesnar. 

Poetic, given what he did to Lesnar at WrestleMania. And what he should do en route to a championship triumph by SummerSlam. 

WWE has captured the proverbial lightning in a bottle with Femi. He's it. There are already kids and grown adults doing his strut to the ring with him on a nightly basis. 

Heck, Femi's strut is already a thing in football celebrations: 

Talk about exposure for Femi and WWE outside of wrestling. 

That non-wrestling fan casual WWE and TKO so pathetically yearns after awkwardly with the likes of Pat McAfee and Jelly Roll, to name a very few? 

Femi's going to have that on lockdown soon. Might already. Let one NFL player hit that strut, folks. 

Talk about a lucky break for WWE, too. Lesnar is pretty much the last gasp of the older generation that has that crossover appeal. Fitting that Brock himself seemed to realize this with the way he went out at 'Mania, pre-planned and actually retired or not. 

WWE has tried and failed to find this Lesnar-level crossover appeal for a while. Roman Reigns is one of the best to ever do it and the Bloodline saga reshaped how we view storytelling in the wrestling medium. But he hasn't reached the crossover appeal despite attempts at acting. 

Not to dunk on the guy while he's trying to get back on the right path post-injury, but look at Bron Breakker. 

Tabbed as another "next big thing" by fans, Breakker has the look, size and moveset to be a big deal. But he's stumbled out of the gates not just because of injury, but because of limitations like mic work. Projecting it out over the long-term, it's fair to question if he can come up with dynamic character developments. 

Unfair? Maybe. But it's easy to see the path with Femi. He's the people's champion right now and can bounce plenty of heels off the mat until the fans inevitably turn on him. And when they do, that heel pivot, maybe with a little corporate-suited flair, will hit like a bolt of lightning and give an up-and-coming babyface the chance of a lifetime to take him down. 

Title required to make that work, of course. Femi's currently busy bullying anyone who answers his open challenges, which is fun. But there's little reason to keep him out of the main-event scene for much longer. 

This wouldn't be as bold as to suggest he should go take down Reigns. But WrestleMania hadn't even officially ended and they had already addressed one another, so there's that: 

Maybe it's as simple as letting him get after and eventually beat Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed title. That feels like CM Punk's role going into the summer, but who would complain if Femi beats Rhodes at SummerSlam while Rhodes-Punk gets kicked to the next 'Mania, belt-free? 

Nobody. After another meddle-filled botch of a 'Mania trip for Rhodes, anyway, before an inevitable ho-hum reign, it might be best to get the title off him, anyway. 

It's hard to imagine Reigns doesn't hold his title until the next 'Mania. But with Jacob Fatu being his first feud, perhaps this is a run where he puts over the next era of main-event talent. That sort of run culminating in Femi taking him down at SummerSlam would be fantastic. 

Either way, the timeline works. Femi getting a championship win at an upcoming PLE like Clash in Italy or Night of Champions in June wouldn't make a ton of sense. Starting a feud with Rhodes or Reigns around that time would let them put him over majorly at SummerSlam in front of what is probably the second-biggest audience of the year. 

And putting Femi over at SummerSlam like that would give them the runway to capitalize on his massive hype for months until he slots into a main event at WrestleMania, potentially reeling in the most casual eyeballs possible, as they so desire. 

Really, this rough draft beats the tar out of what WWE has attempted otherwise with its main event scenes. Punk and Reigns did great, all things considered. The Rhodes-Randy-Orton-McAfee-Jelly-Roll disaster doesn't need elaboration at this point, right?

WWE could also beat its chest over the newfound developmental pipeline. Femi is the poster boy of WWE's NIL. He's only been living stateside since 2017 and after some college sports triumphs, only debuted in NXT in 2022.

Maybe some would worry Femi's still green and highlight it as a drawback. But his promos have been great so far and could only improve. If character or mic work becomes a problem, get him with a Paul Heyman or similar. And when the fans turn, that's when his turn happens. 

Superstars aged just 28 with crossover appeal into the real world, possibly retiring Brock Lesnar in the process, don't strut through that door often, essentially. WWE getting a title around Femi's waist at SummerSlam would appease the majority of fans and give the promotion the outside attention it wants on the way to the next 'Mania. 

If this isn't the rough timeline of things, it would be right to start worrying about whether this modern version of WWE can even properly manage the level of star Femi appears to be.