Randy Orton defeated John Cena, not for the Unified Championship, but for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship on Sunday at TLC.
While WWE tried to make the match super meaningful and historic, it was too little too late. But, if they now make the WWE World Heavyweight Championship a priority, they can make up for lost time. The belt has to mean something in order for this to make any sense.
WWE World Heavyweight Championship
At the start of the show, the Authority immediately put Randy Orton back in his place when he suggested that he didn’t have to listen to anyone. I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want to be champion. It seems like a pain in the ass to have to pander to Stephanie and Triple H all the time. It seems much more fun to be Daniel Bryan or John Cena than it does to be Randy Orton.
Thanks to Cena, the Authority set up a main event non-title match between Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan which may have been the second best match they’ve had together. And since Bryan won after the Orton disqualification, it could possibly build up a title match shortly between the two. Orton also hit John Cena with the RKO after the match was over and Cena attended to Bryan. Since when does someone attend to another wrestler for getting hit in the balls?
I’m not convinced their plans to reinvigorate the WWE World Heavyweight Championship are long-term, but I liked how they followed up TLC.
Will HBK wrestle again?
Shawn Michaels showed up on Raw again in a fun, though weird segment with CM Punk. It’s only weird because I’m not sure why Michaels was there as outside of verbally sparring with Punk, he didn’t do anything except introduce The Shield who faced Punk and the Usos.
It definitely looks like HBK will be woven into wherever the main storyline is headed toward WrestleMania. But will he wrestle? If they are setting him up to wrestle, they are doing a good job as people are starting to clamor for him to get back into the ring. But if not, they’re setting fans up for disappointment, again.
Could he face Bryan at WrestleMania? Punk at WrestleMania? Get DX back together with Triple H to face both Bryan and Punk? There are some great possible match-ups out there if he does decide to pull the trigger.
Other tidbits
I am enjoying the tag team of Rey Mysterio and the Big Show, mostly because I’m sick of watching Big Show singles matches, but as a closer on a tag team, he’s great. And who doesn’t enjoy Mysterio? By placing him in a tag team, you get more mileage out of whatever he has left in his career. I would love to continue seeing them work with the Rhodes Brothers, aka Grandsons Of A Plumber.
Raw was a super tag team heavy show and it was great to see. These were the teams that worked: Mysterio and Show, Rhodes Bros, Mark Henry & Big E, Real Americans, Brodus Clay and Tensai, Rybaxel, the Usos (in a 6-man), the Shield (same), and R-Truth and Xavier Woods did commentary and danced.
This is the best the tag division has looked in quite some time.
Raw rating
I thought the show was easily enjoyable, though, not all that exciting.
It gets: 3 JRs (out of 5)
