Reason for Lesnar’s absence on WWE Raw still not entirely clear

It is still not completely clear regarding what happened with Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman not appearing last night on Raw, but it’s believed to have been an 11th hour creative change.

We’re told the goal of the build to the Roman Reigns vs. Lesnar WrestleMania match on April 8th is to get Reigns cheered to lead to his win. Lesnar is also still scheduled to return on the March 12th Raw in Detroit.

Neither Lesnar nor Heyman were in Anaheim last night, although they were advertised and a segment with both of them was written into the script of the show. Lesnar had come to Las Vegas the day before as the photograph going around of him with Dana White was taken on Sunday afternoon.

The idea for the build to the WrestleMania main event, which has been planned for roughly one year, and is essentially the culmination of what was supposed to happen in 2015, is to make the build come across as much like a shoot as possible and the segment did accomplish that goal.

Reigns cut a promo during the show saying he thought Lesnar would be there, but Lesnar was hiding behind his contract and didn’t come, and then cut a promo about how everyone resents Lesnar’s status of working when he wants in the cities he wants while they all work a full-time schedule. Reigns, who was booed heavily coming out, was cheered at the end of the segment. He tried to give the impression he was doing an unscripted promo and would get in trouble for it, but obviously that was not the case.