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Posts Tagged ‘SummerSlam’

Ric Flair has been giving great matches lately, thanks to the “next time you lose, it’s your retirement match” storyline, and last Monday night’s street fight with Mr. McMahon was no exception. No one wears the crimson mask to greater effect than Flair, and although he’s ridiculously old to be winning so much, he’s been giving some of his best in-ring performances in years of late.

Although popular thought has Flair losing to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania to put the final swan song on his career, it would be fun to push the storyline past WrestleMania, I think. It’s not like Flair is a man just out of drug rehab; he’s in top form for a many of his age, and could probably ride this storyline until SummerSlam next August.

See, thing is, Flair has now won enough that he ought really to be considered a number one contender for the WWE title, if he wins his match at WrestleMania; what better way to send Flair off into his final sunset than to have him fact whoever is champ after WrestleMania, win the title, and carry it for a few PPVs before finally losing the title and retiring at SummerSlam? The 17-time world champ deserves one final, career-capping title run, if you ask me.

As the final RAW before the WWE’s biggest PPV of the year, WrestleMania 23, last night’s show demonstrated just how ill-conceived the main events have been. Michaels taking out John Cena with his Sweet Chin Music move was about as predictable and anticlimactic as it comes.

Truth be told, Cena vs. Michaels just isn’t that interesting. Both Michaels and Cena are too over as faces and neither is getting any genuine heel heat. And Michaels is about 10 years too late in his career to be main eventing WrestleMania against Cena. Far more intriguing would have been to match up Cena against Edge, Orton or The Great Khali, but apparently Vinnie Mac and company decided to play it safe this year. Too safe. And that makes for an uninteresting WrestleMania.

Despite prodigious amounts of promotion, including bringing in Donald Trump to help lend WM23 some outside-of-wrestling star power, the Billionaire’s Hair Match seems to intrigue Vinnie Mac far more than it does the average RAW viewer, and again suffers from utter predictability: does anyone really believe Lashley will lose and that Trump would agree to be shaved bald? Vinnie Mac is a foregone conclusion as the bald billionaire. Yawn.

I could go on, but the rest of the WM23 undercard is just as boring and predictable. And we all know that, whatever happens, the better undercard matches will simply get a RAW, ECW or SmackDown “rematch” next week, anyway, and that Trump will appear for one more video conferencing cameo to gloat over a bald Vinnie Mac on next week’s RAW. What else is new? Certainly nothing coming up at WM23.

About the only way to save WM23 is to throw the fans a curve ball by encouraging Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to come out of “wrestling retirement” to make a surprise guest appearance and grab the WWE title away from Cena after Cena defeats Michaels, as part of what could be perhaps a six-month return that would climax with The Rock as a heel champ surrendering the title back to Cena at SummerSlam so he can go make movies again.

Of course, the likelihood of that is about equal to a “living and dead” reunion of The Beatles at WM23.