Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar carry a deeply flawed WWE Raw toward WrestleMania 41

Today is April 7, 2026. We are exactly 12 days away from WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas. The tension is obvious. You can feel the panic and the pressure seeping into every single segment of weekly television.

Last night's episode of WWE Raw was the beginning of the final sprint. This is the time of year when the company usually shifts into overdrive. The storylines are supposed to be locked. The matches are made. All that is left is the hard sell.

But the hard sell is a tricky thing to master. Wrestling Inc's review of the April 6 broadcast perfectly captured the bipolar nature of the current product. They highlighted the soaring highs and the frustrating lows of a company trying to drag an audience across the finish line.

The show was built around two massive set pieces. We got a purported CM Punk "pipe bomb" and a chaotic, arena-trashing brawl between Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar. These two segments represent everything WWE does right, and everything they still struggle with, under the current creative regime. Let's break down exactly what happened.

The Collision of Absolute Monsters

Nobody turns on a television to watch Brock Lesnar chain wrestle. That is not his function. Lesnar is a human special effect. He is brought in to throw large men across the ring and look terrifying doing it.

Oba Femi is the perfect dance partner for him right now. Femi has been a revelation over the last two years. He dominated NXT with a terrifying combination of raw power and surprising agility. His North American Championship run established him as a legitimate monster. He moves with a speed that defies his massive frame.

Moving him up to the main roster and immediately putting him in Lesnar's crosshairs is a massive statement of intent. The brawl on the April 6 Raw was exactly what it needed to be. It was violent. It was messy. It looked like two actual heavyweights trying to genuinely hurt each other.

Femi did not back down. That is the key detail. When Lesnar confronts a younger talent, the story is usually about survival. The opponent bumps around, takes three German suplexes, and hopes to look gritty in defeat.

This was different. Femi stood toe-to-toe with the Beast. He looked him in the eye and swung heavy hands. He even managed to hoist Lesnar up for a brief second, teasing a massive powerbomb before a sea of security guards flooded the ring. The visual of Lesnar actually looking surprised was worth the price of admission.

This is the exact kind of match Allegiant Stadium demands. WrestleMania 41 is going to feature a lot of deep, psychological storytelling. You have Cody Rhodes defending the WWE Championship against the looming shadow of the Bloodline. You have John Cena saying an emotional goodbye to the industry.

Those matches will be long. They will be emotionally draining. You need a palate cleanser on the card. A violent, hard-hitting sprint between Femi and Lesnar provides that perfectly.

But here is my biggest criticism of the angle. Why are we doing this now?

WrestleMania is less than two weeks away. This brawl felt incredible in the moment, but it also felt entirely rushed. WWE has a terrible habit of keeping Lesnar in a glass case until the last possible second. They could have spent two months building this feud.

Instead, they opted for a quick, explosive pull-apart to generate social media clips. It works in a vacuum. It gets a loud reaction. But it robs the fans of the slow burn. Femi deserves better than a microwave feud with a part-timer, even if that part-timer is Brock Lesnar. They are relying entirely on the visual of the brawl to sell the match, rather than doing the actual work of telling a story.

The Illusion of the Pipe Bomb

Then we have CM Punk. Punk is heading into Las Vegas for a major match, and last night he decided to take a microphone and air his grievances.

The wrestling media immediately took the bait. The recap of the April 6 Raw threw around the term "pipe bomb" to describe his promo. I find this framing incredibly lazy. It is a symptom of a broader problem with how we talk about CM Punk in 2026.

Punk is a master orator. He can control a live crowd with effortless precision. He knows exactly when to raise his voice and when to let a pause linger. He dictates the tempo of the entire arena.

But calling every good Punk promo a "pipe bomb" completely dilutes the historical weight of that phrase. The original promo in 2011 worked because it felt dangerous. It felt like an employee actually going rogue on live television.

Last night was not dangerous. It was a highly polished, heavily rehearsed segment designed to move a storyline forward.

Punk likes to play the hits. He sits down in the middle of the ring. He breaks the fourth wall. He references backstage politics and attempts to blur the lines between reality and fiction. It is a formula, and it is a very effective one. But it is still a formula.

He is no longer the voice of the voiceless. He is an establishment star making millions of dollars to co-main event WrestleMania. There is nothing rebellious about his current run. Pretending otherwise is just marketing.

The promo on Raw was good. It sold his match for Las Vegas. But it lacked the venom of his earlier work. It felt like Punk playing a character who remembers being angry, rather than actually being angry.

He is a veteran securing his spot on the card. He doesn't need to pretend he is burning the company down to do that. The reality of his major match in Vegas is compelling enough on its own. The crowd wants to see him wrestle. They want to see if his body can hold up under the bright lights of Allegiant Stadium.

The promo last night should have focused on that physical vulnerability. Instead, we got the same tired complaints about invisible executives. It is safe. It is repetitive. It is just CM Punk reading his own sheet music.

The Middle Hour Death Zone

This brings us to the negative side of the April 6 broadcast. If you are making a list of things to hate about Raw, the formatting has to be at the top.

The show is simply too long. Three hours of weekly wrestling television is an impossible standard to maintain. When you have high peaks like the Femi-Lesnar brawl and the Punk promo, the valleys look completely desolate.

The middle hour of last night's show was a slog. It was packed with the kind of filler that makes watching Raw a chore. We got endless video packages repeating information we already knew. We got backstage interviews that went absolutely nowhere.

Let's talk about the backstage segments for a second. The invisible camera trope is completely out of control. Two wrestlers standing awkwardly in front of a monitor, pretending they cannot see the cameraman directly in front of their faces. It is lazy production. It pulls you right out of the reality of the show.

Consider the state of the midcard. We are supposed to believe these secondary feuds matter, but the booking tells a different story. Last night featured a tag team match that ended in yet another distraction finish. It is the cheapest trick in the book.

A wrestler's entrance music hits, the opponent looks at the entrance ramp like a confused deer, and they get rolled up for the pin.

It is insulting to the viewer's intelligence. We are asked to invest in these athletes, yet they are portrayed as incredibly stupid. This happens almost every week on Raw. It is the clearest indicator of a creative team running on fumes.

They have plotted out the main events meticulously, but the undercard is left to fend for itself.

When Wrestling Inc listed the things they hated, I guarantee the sheer volume of formulaic finishes was on their mind. You cannot book a three-hour show with only two original ideas. The rest of the roster is out there treading water, waiting for Vegas just like the rest of us.

We also got matches that seemed designed purely to hit a television time cue. Bad Raw matches follow an identical rhythm. It starts slow. It goes to a commercial break. The babyface makes a comeback. The heel cheats to win. It is wrestling by numbers.

Even with WrestleMania 41 looming over the product, WWE struggles to fill the time. They pad the broadcast with meaningless content. The live crowd in the arena always feels it. You could see the energy completely drain out of the building around the 90-minute mark.

They woke up for Lesnar. They paid attention to Punk. But for a solid hour in the middle of the show, they were sitting on their hands. You cannot blame them. The company was giving them absolutely nothing to care about.

Vegas Demands Spectacle

Despite the pacing issues of Monday night, the road leads directly to Las Vegas. WrestleMania 41 is shaping up to be a massive commercial and critical success.

The card is loaded with star power. The stakes feel appropriately high. We are going to see the end of an era with John Cena. We are going to see Cody Rhodes try to cement his legacy as the face of the company. We are going to see blood, sweat, and massive pyrotechnics.

John Cena's farewell is another massive variable. We are witnessing the final matches of the most dominant star of his generation. Every appearance he makes right now feels like a historical document.

Yet, WWE often struggles to balance his immense gravity with the rest of the card. When Cena speaks, the rest of the roster shrinks. They have to ensure that his exit does not overshadow the current champions.

Cody Rhodes has an impossible job. He has to carry the WWE Championship into a stadium where the ghost of Roman Reigns still lingers. The Bloodline saga refuses to die, mutating into new and terrifying forms. Rhodes is the anchor. His segments on Raw are consistently strong, but he is fighting an uphill battle against the sheer length of the broadcast.

The April 6 episode of Raw was a perfect microcosm of modern WWE. You get flashes of brilliant violence, like Oba Femi throwing hands with Brock Lesnar. You get flashes of compelling character work, like CM Punk holding court in the center of the ring.

And you get a whole lot of mediocrity filling the gaps.

Paul Levesque has done an excellent job steadying the ship. The television product is vastly superior to what it was five years ago. Stories actually make sense now. Characters have logical motivations. Matches rarely end in confusing disqualifications.

But the fundamental structural problems of the show remain untouched.

Raw is a grind. It asks too much of its audience. If you only watch the highlight clips on social media, you probably think the April 6 episode was an all-time classic. If you sat through the entire three hours, you know the truth. It was a flawed show with a few great moments.

We only have a few stops left before Allegiant Stadium. The creative team has to tighten the screws. They cannot afford another sluggish middle hour next week. The go-home show needs to be relentless.

Let's hope the Femi-Lesnar match actually gets the time it deserves in Vegas. If they give them 10 minutes to just destroy each other, it will be the highlight of the weekend. If they overcomplicate the booking, it will be a disaster.

The pieces are all on the board. The matchups are intriguing. The crowd is ready to spend their money. Now WWE just has to avoid knocking the pieces over before April 19. They have built the tension perfectly. They just need to execute the finish.