It has been a series of odd booking choices of late for the WWE. Having John Cena taking on Rusev at Fast Lane, the new WWE event that has replaced the Elimination Chamber is the latest. Why the WWE if you will pardon the pun is rushing this match now remains to be seen. Rusev had long been pegged as Cena’s dance partner for Wrestlemania 31. What the WWE hopes to accomplish with this match is fairly unclear at this point.
John Cena is coming off losing a WWE title match in which he failed to regain the Championship from Brock Lesnar yet again. Logic suggests Cena is in need of a win but at this point do wins and loses even matter with him. Still WWE has never had Cena go into any kind of prolonged losing streak. He is after all the guy the moves the most merchandise and is considered the face of the company.
Rusev has been slowly and methodically built into a huge monster heel that has never been pinned or submitted in his time in WWE. Cena has in his career been billed as a super hero and champion of the American military at times based on that it seems unimaginable he would lose in this showdown.
This leads us back to why we have Rusev and Cena heading towards a match with very little time to build the match and no real outcome that makes any sense. If Cena wins, the idea of a re-match at Wrestlemania seems unlikely to unnecessary. If Rusev were to win, a re-match makes sense but much like the feud with Bray Wyatt last year for Cena, you have Rusev losing on the big stage killing his momentum. If the match ends in some sort of non-finish you have ripped off people in Memphis given them a match with no conclusion and wasted everyone’s time to some degree.
There has been a lot of talk of the WWE’s lack of long-term planning and this seems to be an example of it. I find it hard to believe the plan was to have this match. In fact, it was being advertised that Cena would team with Reigns to take on Rusev and Rollins at Fast Lane in the local market. So there is some prove a change in plans was made. Perhaps the reaction to Roman Reigns at the Rumble is the reason behind it. The idea of tagging him with John Cena would not be a good one under any circumstances but with the negative reaction, he was given in Philadelphia even with The Rock’s endorsement makes teaming with Cena a death sentence to Reigns as a baby face heading into Wrestlemania.
In any case, the WWE has decided to go with this program a month earlier and I have to imagine it will take away from a match at Mania by having the two be involved in a match the month prior. Unless they have some other opponent in mind for Cena at Wrestlemania and Rusev is out. Who that would be would be a complete mystery at this point. Only thing that makes any sense is a rematch with Bryan perhaps for the number one contender to face the WWE Heavyweight Champion. Still Rusev and Cena seemed like the money program that WWE was banking on.
Vince McMahon has always been a fan of very patriotic based angles despite them not always getting over as well as he might have hoped. A great example tied to Wrestlemania was the Slaughter against Hogan World Title match the headlined Wrestlemania 7. That Mania was originally scheduled to be at the L.A Coliseum a huge outdoor venue. It was moved to the L.A Sports Arena it was said out of fear or terrorism concerns but was in fact due to poor ticket sales for the event.
Ready on not Rusev and John Cena is being given the green light to kick off a month earlier at WWE Fast Lane. It will be interesting to see how this program influences Rusev and if it has a similar negative impact that it did for Bray Wyatt coming out of the Cena program last year.
WWE Network apparently has passed the million-subscriber mark and perhaps they are hoping to get a few extra subscribers to hop on board prior to Wrestlemania where subscriptions ate likely to get a temporary bump for the company’s biggest event of the year. Perhaps a vision will be made clear with the live Smackdown tonight that in effect will be Raw for this week with forced cancellation of the event due to the massive snowstorm in the U.S northeast.
Ready or not, it is Rusev vs. John Cena for the hopes and dreams of America. Something like that!
No comments:
Post a Comment