Brock Lesnar Beats Oba Femi, but the Rematch Cost WWE More

Brock Lesnar beat Oba Femi in six minutes and 21 seconds at WWE Clash in Italy on May 31, delivering seven F5s, including one through the announce table, to even a rivalry the younger man had led since WrestleMania 42. The official scoreline now reads 1-1. The harder question is what the rematch cost.

Most of the reaction has framed the Turin result as Lesnar’s overdue revenge and a match that delivered. That read holds up as far as it goes. It also skips the part where WWE spent the rarest thing Femi owned, the night he beat the Beast clean in front of a stadium, to build a third match almost nobody had asked for.

Seven F5s in Six Minutes, and the Score Reads 1-1

Brock Lesnar, the part-time attraction billed for years as the Beast Incarnate, did not wait for the bell. He jumped Oba Femi at the opening and stacked up four F5s (Lesnar’s signature lift-and-slam finisher) inside the first stretch of the match. Femi kicked out anyway, which set the tone for a bout that played like a fast car crash rather than a slow build.

From there the fight spilled outside. Femi caught Lesnar with a chokeslam, cleared the English announce desk, and looked briefly in control. Lesnar answered by whipping him into the ring post, then planting him through that same desk before dragging him back for the finish. The seventh F5 ended it.

You can watch the Clash in Italy match highlights on WWE’s official channel. The bare numbers tell the story faster.

• 7 F5s before the three-count, the most Lesnar has ever needed to put a single opponent away.
• 6 minutes, 21 seconds of bell-to-bell action, barely longer than their first meeting.
• One trip through the announce table, the spot the highlight package built around.
• First singles loss for Femi since he dropped the NXT Championship to Ricky Saints on September 27, 2025.

Why the WrestleMania Win Was Supposed to Be the Ending

Rewind six weeks. At WrestleMania 42 on April 19, in front of Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Femi opened Night 2 by making short work of Lesnar, finishing him with a chokeslam and his Fall From Grace powerbomb. The win made him the first man who had never held a WWE Championship to pin Lesnar at WrestleMania.

What followed felt like a full stop. Lesnar removed his gloves and his boots in the center of the ring, embraced his longtime advocate Paul Heyman, and waved to the crowd in what looked like a retirement. WWE’s own pre-match breakdown had sold the bout as a passing of the torch, and you can still read that framing in the company’s WrestleMania 42 match preview.

For weeks the booking honored that ending. Femi launched a weekly open challenge on Raw, the kind of segment WWE reserves for a star it wants to build into a fixture. Lesnar stayed gone.

Then Heyman walked a signed contract to Adam Pearce, WWE’s on-screen Raw general manager, and made the rematch official. The man who had appeared to retire was coming back to collect.

The Booking Question Fans Keep Asking

Here is where the celebration splits from the math. The original match worked because it had a clean, emotional payoff that a stadium crowd bought completely. Running it back so soon asks the audience to treat that payoff as temporary.

The complaints from the wrestling press and from fans cluster around a few clear points.

• The first finish needed no revisiting; it was praised on the night as one of the year’s best moments.
• Femi’s undefeated aura was the asset, and a quick loss spends it to tee up a presumed trilogy.
• A short, frantic rematch diluted the build that made the original land.
• WWE now owes the feud a third chapter big enough to justify reopening a story it had closed cleanly.

Not everyone reads it as damage. A WWE Hall of Famer publicly pushed back on the idea that Femi was buried, arguing a competitive loss to a legend across a seven-F5 war is closer to a rite of passage than a demotion. That is the optimistic case, and it depends entirely on what comes next.

Lesnar’s Win-Loss Math Cuts Both Ways

Context matters when you weigh a Lesnar result. Coming into Turin, he sat at 5-5 across his last 10 singles matches dating back to SummerSlam 2022, a stretch in which losing to him no longer carries the automatic prestige it once did. A win over a Lesnar who trades wins and losses is worth less than a win over the unbeatable version.

Put the two meetings side by side and the trade WWE made comes into focus.

The full WrestleMania bout is archived on the company’s complete-match library, and watching them back to back is the cleanest way to feel the difference. One was an event. The other was a correction.

Who Oba Femi Is and What He Stands to Lose

The reason this argument has heat is that Femi is not a placeholder. Born Isaac Odugbesan in Lagos on April 22, 1998, he is 27, stands 6 feet 6 inches, and weighs around 310 pounds. He came to wrestling from track and field, winning shot put titles at the SEC (Southeastern Conference, a major US college athletics league) for the University of Alabama in 2021 and 2022.

WWE signed him in 2021 through its NIL (name, image and likeness) program for college athletes, and he climbed fast on the developmental side. His record there reads like a prospect WWE invested heavily in:

• Winner of the 2023 NXT (WWE’s developmental brand) Men’s Breakout Tournament.
• Winner of the 2024 Men’s Iron Survivor Challenge.
• Two-time NXT Champion and a former NXT North American Champion.

His main-roster arc only started in earnest this year. He debuted in a non-title bout against Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes at Saturday Night’s Main Event in December, then answered Lesnar’s open challenge and beat him at WrestleMania. You can track his current standing on his WWE roster profile page.

That is the resume WWE chose to dent. Femi is young enough to recover, but the specific thing he loses, the clean signature win over a legend, does not come back twice.

What a Trilogy Has to Prove Now

WWE clearly has a third match in mind; the post-bout taunt about an even series was a setup, not a button. The Turin card itself showed the company is willing to invest in big nights, with Roman Reigns retaining and Cody Rhodes pinning Gunther on the same Clash in Italy show. The talent and the stage are there.

The risk is narrative, not roster. A decider only justifies the detour if it sends Femi back up at least as high as Las Vegas left him, ideally higher, and on a stage that dwarfs a six-minute mid-card sprint.

If the third match crowns Femi as decisively as WrestleMania did, the Turin loss reads as a speed bump on the way to a bigger coronation. If it props the Beast up one more time, the night a 27-year-old beat him clean turns into a footnote, and that is a trade WWE will not be able to take back.