Owens vs Cena II

[Hanley!]

So we already had this argument in the shoutbox after Elimination Chamber with Brett, but I thought I'd give some more people a chance to weigh in here.

Who else thinks that doing this rematch two weeks later is utterly moronic?

From a booking/marketing standpoint, it's just such an uninteresting way of doing things. Owens picked up a monumental win at Elimination Chamber. The smart thing to do would have been to milk that victory a bit and hype up how huge it was. Instead they're launching straight into a rematch and it feels like the importance of the victory got pushed under the rug.

Besides, it just takes away from Owens victory to announce a rematch for just two weeks later on the same show that he picked up the win. 30 minutes after we saw this big win, WWE basically announced "don't get too excited, cos Cena's getting his win back in a couple of weeks". We all know how wrestling works at this point. It was particularly stupid that they didn't even let fans just take in his victory for even one night.

From a kayfabe standpoint, it doesn't even make sense for Owens to give Cena a rematch. Owens is all about fighting on his terms and when he wants to. He had a big match with Cena and won clean in the middle. He has no reason to fight Cena ever again. There's nothing he can get out of it now. And with the heel authority on his side, there's no reason why he would be forced to compete against Cena again.

It would have made for a cool story if Owens was dominating everyone and lording his victory over Cena, and Cena had to gradually earn the right to take him on again. Then Cena could win a rematch two months down the line (or longer, if they actually wanted to give long term booking a try). That would have gotten Owens over, it would have gotten Cena over and it would have made the rematch a big deal. By having the match at Money in the Bank, they've made what was an exciting match-up a couple of weeks ago into something that's pretty uninteresting.

Three pay per views in five weeks is too much anyway, and it's going to lead to people being burned out on stuff, but that's all the more reason to not just run direct rematches on these shows. If we just saw this match two weeks ago, nobody is going to be hyped for it. Make us want the damn rematch before just forcing it on us.

I guess that's what I dislike about WWE's booking in general right now. They don't build to things organically, and they don't wait until we want to see something before giving it to us. 90% of their booking strategy now is just announcing matches for pay per views. Everything else is unimportant, they can kill time on Raw doing whatever.

I would have been excited to see this match again in a couple of months with some actual story behind it. On Money in the Bank, I couldn't care about it less. If Cena wins then congratulations: nobody got over. And even in the unlikely event that Owens wins, the story hasn't progressed so this match was kinda pointless.

[SlightlyJames]

Yeah, this is a pretty dumb way to go about things, Owens' win was absolutely monumental and they've given it no time whatsoever to breathe, now they're in a position where like you said, either they kick him back down the ladder or he does exactly what he did two weeks ago and looks no better for it.

This is something they do all the time, it just becomes all the more noticeable and annoying when they give no consideration whatsoever to something that could absolutely make a guy's career.

[Str8Shooter]

I don't think it's completely out of the question that Owens beat Cena again clean. I don't know why but it's a gut feeling I get about them pushing Owens and being high on him. I mean you could already argue he's the #2 heel in the company after only a month or so.

I agree that it's probably too soon to have the rematch, but like you said with all these shows this is pretty much the way it works now, for better or worse. I also don't believe even a clean loss to Cena is going to do that much harm to Owens if that's what happens. In today's wrestling everybody loses, and most people lose a lot. That could be a larger problem for WWE in general, but it also means that a loss won't ruin Owens because everybody else loses regularly too. If he's protected afterwards he'll be just fine.

[SKS]

I think Owens is winning again honestly. They're pushing this guy to the moon, he has Triple H'a support and they're selling like 5 different shirts of his and even his promos address that cena beats everyone. It wouldn't make sense to me for them to do this so quickly if he wasn't going to get another W despite it being against Super Cena.

They should have waited until summerslam to build some hype for the rematch though. It was a great match and it really loses that feeling when it's thrown right back out in 2 weeks.

[Hanley!]

If I had to guess what happens, Cena wins this one by DQ. Or maybe countout. Owens will take the low road at some point, when he thinks Cena has the best of him.

It's possible that Cena just gets the clean win, but I'd be massively surprised if Owens did.

[KaiserGlider]

It's not so much Owens/Cena happening at the next PPV that bothers me, because it's Cena and he needs to do something. The way they randomly announced it with no buildup, no reason, right after Owens beat Cena kind of squashed what excitement I would have had for it. It would be pretty awesome if Owens beats Cena again though.

This is something they do all the time, it just becomes all the more noticeable and annoying when they give no consideration whatsoever to something that could absolutely make a guy's career

That reminds me, what the fuck happened to Miz vs Damien Sandow? That was organically building to what could have been a huge feud, then they had a random 5 minute match on Raw and... that was it.