Your eyes do not deceive you! I am still here!
I have not been able to write many articles in recent months due to the current long process of moving home. But just like Ric Flair, when you think he’s gone, he turns up, delirious and mad as ever!
So what has happened in my absence? Well, in the past few months not a lot really. That was until SummerSlam when we all got to witness WWE take the appropriate direction with the man who ended the Undertaker’s undefeated streak. Brock Lesnar delivered a beat down on John Cena of epic proportions!
It has now been announced that John Cena will challenge Brock Lesnar to a rematch for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at Night of Champions. WWE are now at a crossroads. They have the option of going back to the old ways of John Cena ‘never giving up’ and regaining the Championship or they can continue this show of dominance by Brock Lesnar.
John Cena has on a regular basis stated that he will do whatever the company requires him to do and he doesn’t feel he will ever turn heel. He has mocked the IWC with inside jokes such as dance steps, referencing the ‘fives moves of doom’ and constantly trying to piggy back on talent that is currently over with the audience.
John Cena has also teased heel turns through various storylines in the past such as Kane’s ‘Embrace the hate’, WrestleMania 28’s ‘I can’t lose this match against The Rock’ and Bray Wyatt’s ‘you’re a fraud’ narratives. All of these have ultimately ended up with Cena shrugging off all natural human emotions and weaknesses like some kind of robot and eventually coming out on top. Now I understand that the good guy usually does do so in wrestling but when you have so many opportunities to make that massive shift in the industry, WWE have always fobbed it off and kept with the norm.
WWE have now reached their new era. They have unveiled a new logo, they are trying to change the industry with the use of on demand content through the Network and they did the unthinkable, they made the man who ended the streak, dominate and destroy John Cena.
Night of Champions marks a very important night for WWE. Do they want to continue this new trend? Or will they do what they have done before and have Cena take the title back and they resume business as normal. In the past I can understand from a business standpoint what they were doing. Now however, things are different.
The Network isn’t performing as well as predicted and that is largely due to the fact that the product just isn’t as entertaining as it should be. We’re now over 10 years in to John Cena being ‘the man’ and people are just fed up with it. The two people that the fans really connected with and looked too for a new generation going forward were Daniel Bryan and CM Punk but unfortunately due to injuries and creative disagreements these two men are not in the picture.
Never in my memory has RAW’s and SmackDown’s been so uneventful. RAW’s are 3 hours long which is such a massive commitment that it’s understandable that people start to drift away from the show and SmackDown is basically a RAW highlight show with about 45 minutes original content, of which nothing matters. You could quite easily watch PPV’s every month and just as easy understand and follow the product.
The whole organization needs a shake-up. I’m not talking about a new attitude era but possibly something with a little more edge to it.
Bit of fantasy booking but how would this sound to you. The match between Lesnar and Cena at Night of Champions gets turned in to an ‘I Quit’ match. Lesnar destroys Cena again and forces him to quit. Fans jaws would hit the floor just like at SummerSlam. Cena comes out the following night on RAW and explains he can’t believe he had to quit and that he gave everything he had, all this whilst the fans are still getting on his back with “You tapped out” chants. Cena starts to crack and has to leave. Cena is gone until next year and have him surprise return to help someone like a Daniel Bryan who is in trouble, only for him to turn. The wrestling world goes mad.
He could then blame Bryan for not understanding why the crowd love him so much and hate him when he’s only ever tried to do the right thing. Whilst all this is going on, Lesnar could still be dominant, defeating people like Batista, Sheamus, Bray Wyatt, Chris Jericho, Cesaro and Rusev on the road to WrestleMania 31. Reigns can win the Rumble and you can give him the massive win over Lesnar if you want to pass it on to a new guy.
I’m not sure about you but I would love to see WWE go in this direction. It isn’t necessarily unpredictable but if done correctly, it could be very interesting.
The WWE is full of talented performers, but the trouble is, do you actually care for any of them? Wrestling becomes brilliant when you take a vested interest in the persons character. People get excited about Brock Lesnar because they know his character on TV is mainly the same person in real life with the volume turned up. You believe that Brock can hurt someone if he wants to and he’s such a loose cannon that this could actually happen. It makes you want to see what will happen.
People want cliff-hangers and talking points. Not endless 6 man tag team matches with no purpose and commentators which argue between themselves for the entirety of a match (by the way, if I hear the commentary team talk about Miz’s ‘Money Maker’ one more time I’m going to F5 my TV.)
People want a product where they feel these things could actually happen and they can lose themselves in the story. Cena overcoming the odds yet again isn’t that story. It’s been told so many times in exactly the same way with exactly the same person. Cena loosing at Night of Champions can be the start of something different. Not necessarily the massive change that the IWC would probably want but possibly the start of a change which makes a product which actively looks to involve the older audience as well as the young audience.
Mr Cena… It’s time… Do the right thing… make history.
