WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match
JOHN CENA vs. RANDY ORTON (C)
Best Case Scenario: Randy Orton wins, faces Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania.
What Nick Wants to Happen: A good match, with at least a little tomfoolery to build towards any number of story lines ON THE ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA™
What Will Happen: Randy Orton wins, via shenanigans.
Rather obviously, the results of this match were pleasing to this reviewer on many different levels. As Orton won via Wyatt-related (and completely unexpected if still totally sensical, at least from this reviewer’s perspective) shenanigans after a good match — no matter what the idiots in the crowd were doing — while building towards any number of story lines, there’s nothing more that could have been asked for.
More importantly, however, from a narrative and “overall enjoyment perspective” was how very good Randy Orton is at his job. Cena, is the oldest of old pros when it comes to crowd reactions, smirking away the heat he gets from the audience as he continues to sell out building after building and WrestleMania after WrestleMania. But Randall takes it to another, beautiful level (something that will be addressed in the Viper’s Better Know a Wrestler that’ll be posted later this afternoon.)
This match was troll bait at its finest, in addition to being a very well-worked match. Randy Orton willed not just a sizeable portion of the fans there, most of the non-idiots on Twitter and nearly everyone your reviewer was watching with to, at the very least, care about what was happening INSIDE OF THE RING. Instead of forgetting his lines, or getting flustered, Orton pulled out every trick in his heel book, forcing the crowd to focus its attention back on the matter at hand.
It’s easy to argue — and it’ll be even easier after we finish #OrtonWeek — that we are in the bag for Randy (and also, John) around here, so the rating that’s about to come up may sound ludicrous to most. But, as objectively as possible, the work both put into this match, the ability of the performers to bring the crowd at least somewhat back to them after it got hijacked by the #YesMovement, coupled with an ending that made sense AND made the crowd realize that there may have been a plan for this all along makes that, at least in this reviewer’s eyes, every bit as good (or at least fun to watch) as the Daniel Bryan-Bray Wyatt match.
Match .8 | PPV 2.4
I’ll admit I was upset about the Rumble – but some perspective from @THEN1CKSTER at @juicemakesugar calmed me down: http://t.co/i0VbtsqntY
Man, the WWE’s strategy of keeping Bryan clear from The Rumble is absolutely genius. Getting covered by the BBC. People calling for protests to “push” Bryan. A change.org petition.
They deprived the fans of the D-Bry they love for two weeks for the Wyatt deal and it ended up with him getting an Austin reaction. Now they deprived him of appearing in the Rumble and it’s glorious.
People are so invested in this. A+++.