WWE’s 'next Brock Lesnar’ hasn't progressed as well as hoped

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By Louis Dangoor

Published Sep 12, 2022

The WWE Superstar that was penned to be 'the next Brock Lesnar' hasn't progressed as well as higher-ups would have hopes by now

WWE had aspirations for Gable Steveson to be the 'next Brock Lesnar', but he hasn't progressed as well as higher-ups would have hoped by now.

Steveson was signed to WWE weeks after winning gold at the 2020 Olympic Games. Gable signed his contract in September 2021, becoming the first member of the new NIL program.

This allowed Gable to focus on his school and amateur wrestling career, whilst also training to be a future WWE Superstar.

WWE is unhappy with Gable Steveson's progress

It's now been over a year since Gable signed with WWE, and reports state that the company was hoping that he'd have progressed much more by now.

Steveson hasn't wrestled a match yet, but Dave Meltzer is reporting on Sunday Night's Main Event show that by this point, people within WWE thought he'd be a main event star, via WrestleTalk.

He hasn’t debuted and they wanted to debut him at WrestleMania and it didn’t happen. He was supposed to be fast-tracked to main events by now. Like come right out of college and win the NCAAs, which he did. And then go right to WWE top level and that didn’t happen.

WWE had incredibly high hopes for Gable, viewing him as the heir to Brock Lesnar's throne, but things haven't materialised exactly the way that management would have hoped it would.

When they first announced the deal. He was gonna be the new Brock Lesnar and they were going to send coaches to Minnesota during the wrestling season, they were gonna have him also train as a pro wrestler, which probably wasn’t a good idea to do both at the same time.

What is WWE going to do with Gable Steveson now?

It's worth noting that, at least at the time of writing, the future for Gable within WWE remains quite unclear.

Steveson still remains under contract with WWE, so it's not like the company has released him, but all signs point toward them being rather unhappy with his progress at this stage.

Gable joined WWE with a lot of fanfare, so don't expect Triple H and the other higher-ups involved with this project to give up on the 22-year-old anytime soon.