Best: The Destroyed Ring

I love love loved the visual of the destroyed ring as the setting for Cena and Del Rio’s Last Man Standing match, and it gave them a creative place to wrestle AND a valid excuse to disappear to the various trigger points for backstage video game mayhem around the arena. It was also a nice (and completely unintentional) callback to the greatest Last Man Standing match ever, John Cena vs. Umaga at the Royal Rumble in 2007, a match that ended with the ring looking almost exactly like this. I also love that Alberto Del Rio managed to retain the championship despite being UP AGAINST ALL OF THE ODDS™, and wish he’d just held it from Summerslam to here uninterrupted.

That’s the quick version of what I liked, that doesn’t include me shaking my damn head and practically everything else that went down. This report is getting extremely long, so forgive me for getting a little taciturn. I’m the Mr. Chupon of wrestling show recappers.

Worst: LOL @ Cena Rising Above Hate

John Cena finally ditches his Confederate Flag gear and with what does he replace it? A black t-shirt with the phrase RISE ABOVE HATE on the front, simultaneously cementing him as the biggest fictional hypocrite in WWE’s Be A Star Campaign and giving in to The Rock’s stupid talking point about his clothes being too bright. The Rock is supposed to be back at Survivor Series, right? Is he going to let bygones be bygones with Cena because he changed into a black shirt and some camo shorts?

And as far as the RISE ABOVE HATE shirt goes, outside of being melodramatic as f**k it gets worn about six days after Cena beat a guy up for ten minutes after his match and repeatedly beat him in the face with metal until he literally could not stand up because he hated him so much. The guy who, as CM Punk pointed out and then immediately forgot, hated Dave Batista so much he ended his career with an Attitude Adjustment through the stage after he’d already won the match. John Cena is the personification of hate, the kind of hate WWE and its fans have come to accept as “tough”. It’s why having Sheamus explain bullying to school children is so dumb. Have Evan Bourne explain it to them. Evan Bourne, to my knowledge, has never gone at somebody with a pipe and doesn’t wait until someone beats the sh*t out of him to respect them. Evan Bourne wears bomber jackets and plays XBox. “Rising above” something even means “flying”.

I don’t know. I’m just not sure how I’m going to go through life without Cena’s t-shirt clearly indicating whether he will or will not give up.

Worst: R.I.P. Jorts 2003-2011

He wore black ones for a while, but Cena’s camouflage Old Navy shorts from last night’s show marked the end of an era that began sometime after Halloween in 2002 and rose to prominence during his feud with Mark Henry Brock Lesnar in 2003: the jean shorts. So now he didn’t just change into a black shirt to make the Rock happy, he lost the short pants he’s been wearing for nearly a decade to switch into a Roadblock from G.I. Joe look that the Rock would approve of. He should throw away his U NO C ME hat and wear one with the Brahma Bull on the front and the phrase “I’M NOT AS GOOD AS” across the back.

I still think Cena should show up in long tights with lightning bolts down the side and like, kickpads and completely blow our minds one night.

Best: So Is He A C-800 Or A C-1000

Here is a quick list of things that happened to John Cena, but not so harshly that he was forced to Give Up:

1. Wrestling (obviously)
2. Being hit in the face with the ring post
3. Being hit in the face with the ring steps
4. Having four pieces of the set thrown onto him
5. Being thrown through a different part of the set
6. Being attacked by three people who were not his opponent

And NONE OF THAT was enough to keep him down. Not just keep him down, it wasn’t enough to even hurt him. Tell me you didn’t laugh out loud when Cena started crawling out of that set rubble with his temper tantrum face on. He just got up and started power walking around holding Del Rio by the head. Earlier in the night Del Rio asked John Laurinaitis if he understood how much pain Cena could absorb, but damn, I’ve been watching the guy for ten years and even I didn’t know. I thought if you tossed him into the spotlights around the stage it at least kept him in the red for 10 seconds, but maybe he’s like the Borg, maybe he’s adapted beyond that.

How would this work for anybody else? Remember when Cena dumped like 200 chairs on (a wooden cart above) Wade Barrett? What would WWE have done if Barrett had pulled himself out from under there and just ran up and started doing Wastelands to Cena? NO CHAIRS DON’T HURT ME I CAN DO WASTELAND IT’S 10 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE AA BOOM *crowd noise* Eventually you just give up and stop wrestling with that guy, right? When you get this powered up, when someone can drive a transfer truck into you and you’re still not hurt enough to lose the match, you have to leave. Hogan beat Yokozuna in 9 seconds and had to leave. The Rock had to leave. Cena, you’re a big fish in a small pond now. It’s time to start a new game plus.

Best: A Word About Tonight’s Raw

As I mentioned earlier, all signs point to me attending Raw live tonight, so tomrorow’s report will be about the live version of the show and will hopefully include pictures of me roastin’ weenie’s with Ted DiBiase Jr. and our Texas pals. If you’re there, come by and say hi. I’m the only guy there in a KANA shirt and a Cleveland Indians jacket. I mean, unless the SECOND coolest person in the world lives in Austin, too.