Cena vs. Khali, at last!
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007Remember when WWF wrestlers went around wearing motorcycle sunglasses as a way to either seem like a shifty bad guy or a cool good guy? Simple wardrobe cues like that are no longer commonplace, and modern WWE wrestling is that much better for the change. No longer pretending to be anything but entertainment has allowed wrestling storylines to enjoy a broader array of babyfaces and heels.
However, there’s nothing quite so classic as the big, huge, unstoppable, David-and-Goliath type of storyline to get a good-guy champion over with fans as vulnerable and perhaps doomed. It worked best, and at its most classic, at WrestleMania III and IV when champion Hulk Hogan faced the most storied giant in wrestling history, Andre the Giant.
The only regrettable thing about Hogan-Andre was that Andre was not well late in his career when the classic match-ups took place, making the matches themselves seem a bit sad, rather than being quite as dramatic as they would have been, say, five years earlier in Andre’s career.
I’ve been advocating for a long time - well before this year’s WrestleMania, that the WWE needed to focus on putting over a John Cena - Great Khali rivalry that would reach its zenith at WrestleMania. Instead, WWE pushed the mostly-uninspiring Cena-HBK feud that fizzled more than it sizzled at the annual main event, the Super Bowl of WWE PPVs.
Now, at least, the feud between Cena and Khali is finally underway and the matches are being booked correctly, with Khali as the unstoppable force of nature and Cena as the immovable champion. So far, the feud is hitting all the right notes and even when Cena wins, it seems more by chance than dominance. Considering Cena is suffering from typical overexposure and fans booing him despite his face-style booking, this is exactly the kind of feud Cena needs to rebuild his popularity.
The only problem? Unless the title changes hands to Khali at some point, there’s little chance that a Cena-Khali feud can be sustained through to next year’s WrestleMania. There’s just too many hours of WWE TV and WWE PPVs between now and then.
