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| Is the Rumble a sentence to see this again with gold on the line? Photo Credit: WWE.com |
John Cena, the prohibitive favorite to win the Rumble match, has spent the last two months literally taking a dump on Dolph Ziggler. Before that, he kept losing to CM Punk, but kept getting title shot because who the fuck knows why. His explanation was "CM Punk hasn't earned his big time moment yet." I'd argue his laundry list of "moments" is impressive by any standard, from surviving Jeff Hardy's suicide leap at SummerSlam '09 to laying out The Rock at RAW 1000, but I guess that's the story. It would be a compelling one if WWE were cast in shades of gray, and one could argue that it totally is, even if the company line is still that John Cena is "The Champ" even without the belt.
That being said, shades of gray only work when the characters portraying them are interesting. You may find Cena to be intriguing right now, but I shudder at the thought a hokey guy with corny jokes who is the worst possible carbon copy of Kal-El of Krypton claiming yet another WrestleMania moment in his portfolio of a whole buttpile of them that he has.
Then, there's The Rock, a movie star more than a wrestler, whose comeback so far this year has been one giant dick joke at the expense of anyone who isn't a fratboy douchebag like the bros he hung out with on the U. of Miami football team back in the day. You know, guys like WARREN SAPP and RAY LEWIS who were REAL MEN and not GIRLY BOYS WITH TWINKIE TITS AND INVISIBLE NUTSACS. He compared himself to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and talked about working for ten years to get another title shot, which means that everyone else languishing for a shot at the Spinner Title has been doing it wrong for the last decade, I guess.
Yes, they appeal to the genpop, and the inevitability of them clashing again almost feels oppressive, mainly because if the original was good enough, the sequel is probably gonna do the financials plus at least 20% on top of that. The sirens Vince McMahon listens to are named George, Abraham, Alexander, Andrew, Ulysses, and Benjamin. With taxes, maybe Thomas and Franklin make appearances on their metal discs, but you get the gist.
However, I think I can be correct in assuming that I write for an audience that cares on a deeper level than buyrates and only judging success in wrestling by how much money a sociopathic megalomaniac pockets after the dust has cleared. So while Rock/Cena makes all the sense in the world to Stamford, to those of us out there who root outside the echo chamber, sustaining ourselves as wrestling locavores when we can, it has all the inevitability of the local farms being swallowed up and pumped full of hormones by Monsanto. And just for reference, I think John Cena plays the role of the bigger but more mild-tasting turkey that has replaced the wild birds killed with buckshot on the Thanksgiving table all too well.
So, if nuclear annihilation is staring us in the face, then why should we watch? Well, for me, I'm ordering the Rumble on Sunday not to have a reason to bitch about the results, nor am I watching with the hope of a Cubs fan in spring training that this will be the event that WWE magically listens to us, the iconoclastic observers who populate the "Cena sucks!" chants and did the most to get "Yes!" chants off the ground. I'm watching because I value process over results.
More often than not, the actual Rumble match is among the most fun of the year. Even in years when the action in the ring wasn't as good as it was in the past, we still got stuff like Kharma Implant Busting Dolph Ziggler and tossing Michael Cole over the ropes like the rag doll he should be. We still watch with rapt attention to see who will be that legend who comes back, whether it be someone like Mr. Perfect in 2002, who made it all the way to the Final Four, or just someone like Diesel stepping out from the curtain, making Kofi Kingston look like he was about to defecate in his ring gear. It's where men like CM Punk, who will be defending his WWE Championship against the aforementioned Rock, can hold court and add to their legends, or where singular stars like Kingston or John Morrison dazzle with amazing displays of acrobatics just to keep from touching their feet to the floor.
Speaking of Punk/Rock, last year, Cena did everything he could have outside of pointing to the spot where Rock should have been in position to make their match at Mania more than a goddamn morass of sloppiness. Rock's in-ring game was woefully rusty. If there's anyone who can do the same kinds of miracles as Cena can with a confused part-timer, it's Punk. That's not even to say that Rocky hasn't learned his lesson from last year. The man used to be one of the best in-ring guys in WWE when he was active (and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise, especially between the years of 1999 and 2003). Again, the result might not be pretty, but the lead in to get there? It might totally be worth watching.
I think this year's Rumble teaches the lesson that in modern WWE, watching for how they get to where they're going rather than arrival at a desired destination is a better course of action for fans like you and I (this isn't a measure of snobbery, it's fact that I watch the show for different reasons than the kid with the Cena shirt on and the foam Brahma Bull on his hand... and that's perfectly okay). We might get our skin and viscera blasted from our bones in the blast, but at least in the dead of winter, the nuclear fallout will keep us warm, right?
Right?
