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| Unnecessary? You betcha... Photo Credit: WWE.com |
My least favorite out of all of these, the one that I feel has very little in the way of redeeming quality, is what we saw last night with The Miz and John Cena - tag team partners who are forced to team together for a chance to win the titles. This is at least the fourth time it's happened with Cena (the other three happening with Shawn Michaels, Batista and most recently David Otunga) with it being the third time it's fruited gold for him, albeit in a reign that lasted a mere 10 minutes. There was an added twist of the former Champs, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater, cashing in their rematch clause like it was a Money in the Bank briefcase, making the proceedings even more confusing and Russo-esque.
The first time it was done, with Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels, it was something new and different, and you had two of the best all-time performers ever selling the sizzle. It still didn't make sense, but it was something that you'd hope was a footnote in wrestling history, something that might not be pulled out again for fear of getting tired right quick. Well, that would mean giving the WWE front office credit for trying new things instead of finding something that got over with the crowd and then ramming it into the ground, regardless of what it meant for the drawing power of the Tag Team Championships.
That's the root of the problem with the segment last night. Just yesterday, you had Jim Ross wondering aloud of the Corre could reestablish the tag belts, a high ranking talent evaluator within the company putting pressure on Gabriel and Slater for doing something that the booking last night proved is an impossible task. Meanwhile, the people in another department, the department tasked with helping the Corre team get the belts over, is treating it like a mere prop in another feud. It's maddening. How can the fans expect to take the belts seriously if a corrupt at worst or overly busy at best (I'd classify the RAW GM as more the latter than the former) authority figure can just name two guys that have never teamed before and hate each other as top contenders?
Wrestling is unique in that the guys in charge can have more a hand in creating draws or not. If the belts are presented as must-see, then they're going to be must-see. If they're treated as afterthoughts, fans won't care. The heat in that match wasn't because Cena and Miz were challenging for the titles, it was because they did a great job telling a story that helped further their own feud. Did it have to be done at the expense of the Tag Team Championships? No, it didn't. You could have had that same match, well, the second match, not the first, only in a non-title capacity, or even better, in a match against Wade Barrett and Ezekiel Jackson, and created some other stipulation that would have made Miz at least appear to want to win the match rather than have his endgame being to screw Cena be transparent from the first bell.
Thinking about the proceedings last night more, I have less of a problem with everything that happened if you remove the context. It established Miz's dickhead manipulator character strongly and put more fuel on the WrestleMania fire. However, it still bugs me that they had to sacrifice the tag titles to do it and use such an overworked and increasingly ineffective mechanism to do it. If the WWE never teamed two rivals together to compete for the Tag Team Championships again, I'd be a very, very happy fan. Too bad I have very little faith in them to bury that tired angle away for good.
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