Lol. That’s a little bit of a “straw man” you’ve created there. I didn’t say anything about using it to build a midcard match. I’m not proposing Riddle as a winner, although I guarantee whatever you booked for him would have been a more interesting
story.
You’re taking things as they are, I’m discussing how they
could be. The WWE Title might feel like the IC of yesteryear because that’s how they’ve booked it. They sacrificed whatever story they were telling with that belt because the other champ was taken off the last show. They didn’t have to do that.
They’ve created the setup they have; 2 shows that they want to present as relatively even, with a top champion on each brand. You don’t have to sacrifice everything at the altar of your top guy/top programme. Brock vs. Roman might be the thing that gets the “casuals” to tune into Mania. Does that get enhanced by Brock winning the Rumble? This story has been building since Summer 2020 when Roman aligned with Heyman. I’m not sure what rhe plan was for their match at Day 1 (although I’d guess that’s where the Heyman turn would have happened and we’d end up exactly where we are today with Brock winning the Rumble
) but would they have run the same Brock/Roman match again?