Braun Strowman made his surprise return to the WWE on this week’s Monday Night Raw, attacking the four tag teams in the No.1 contender’s match for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships and eventually powerslamming Angelo Dawkins through the commentary table. He then explained in a backstage interview that he’ll be on this week’s Friday Night SmackDown as well. PWInsider is now reporting that Strowman will be a member of the Blue Brand going forward and that he’ll be positioned as a babyface.
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“The Monster Among Men” was primarily a heel during the final months of his last run with WWE. After failing to win the WWE Championship in a triple threat match at WrestleMania Backlash 2021, Strowman would be released in July due to budget cuts. He would go on wrestle eight matches on the independent scene, most notably with the Control Your Narrative promotion.
“Everything happens for a reason. One door closes and it’s unbelievable how many other doors have opened. So may different opportunities,” Strowman said in an interview last October. “I turned down a lot of money, like an astronomical amount of money to do this. There’s days where I friggin think about it and I’m like ‘holy s—.’ Every three letter word corporation out there has made me an offer, talked to me about what I want to do moving forward. And I said ‘first and foremost, I have something that I want to do.’ One was this. Two was just having a chance to breathe and live. Like I said, I was unbelievably blessed for my time with WWE, but it was very time consuming. I went, in five years, I saw my parents eight times. I missed people’s funerals, I missed weddings, I missed births, I missed Christmas’, I missed Thanksgivings.
“The time was amazing, don’t get me wrong. But I’m still a human being, and I have needs when it comes to comfort. I’m very close with my parents, I’m very close with my family and my friends,” he continued. “So it’s not only being able to work with my friends on a project, being able to work on an app, being able to do all the other stuff that I have coming out very soon that I’ll be able to talk about more. But just being able to live and going back to my grassroots. And this was one of the biggest things to come out of the Narrative, was remembering who the f— I was.”
