Brock Lesnar completely destroyed John Cena to capture the WWE heavyweight championship at SummerSlam last Sunday in one of the most unusual main events in pro wrestling pay- per-view history. What made the bout so unique was how incredibly one-sided it was, with veteran fans scratching their heads to try to recall anything comparable in a business where the obvious built-in advantage is that promoters can book a match to be a back and forth drama that allows fans to view the wrestlers as competitive with one another for the sake of the match itself and, more importantly, everything going forward from it.
During the 1970s, Bruno Sammartino thoroughly dominated Waldo Von Erich and Stan the Lariat Hansen in a couple of high profile grudge matches, but that was a case of the babyface (good guy) exacting revenge on the heel in program blowoffs (the final match of a series where earlier bouts did not have clean finishes due to disqualifications, stoppages due to excessive bleeding or time limits, thereby whetting the appetites of fans for a more satisfying conclusion).
The Sammartino-Hansen bout at Shea Stadium on June 25, 1976 was a particularly unique encounter because Vince McMahon Sr. had talked Sammartino into returning prematurely just two months after he had sustained broken vertebrae in his neck from a bodyslam gone wrong during an April bout with Hansen in Madison Square Garden. McMahon was desperate to have something to offer fans when the closed-circuit venture he got into with Bob Arum for the Muhammad Ali-Antonio Inoki fiasco wasn't selling very well.
Once Sammartino reluctantly agreed to return for a grudge match with Hansen, the box office at Shea picked up considerably. More than 32,000 fans attended a card that also included an Andre the Giant-Chuck Wepner (the boxer who inspired the Rocky character) matchup. Sammartino thoroughly thrashed Hansen as the blond bomber actually fled the ring after a relatively short bout that consisted almost entirely of Sammartino punches, boots and knees to the noggin of the notorious Texan, who had incredible heat for badly injuring the beloved Italian strongman.
The Ali-Inoki shoot was disappointing, to say the least. Both men feared or respected each other so much that they desperately avoided one another for the duration of the fight except for the turtle-like Inoki kicking the daylights out of Ali's calves and Ali getting a couple of inconsequential shots in on Inoki's pelican-like jaw. Although the Sammartino-Hansen bout was completely one-sided, the unusual circumstances of Bruno's injury limitations and the fact that it was a grudge match almost required it to be booked the way it was.
Last Sunday's utter domination of Cena by Lesnar, including Lesnar punishing the now former champ with 16 suplexes, was quite strange. True to his mantra, Cena would not and did not give up before finally being pinned after an F-5, but he was given so little offense (one quick Attitude Adjustment and a relatively brief application of an STF that Lesnar rolled out of with the greatest of ease) in a match that went about 18 minutes and featured, at one point during an extended onslaught by Lesnar, a relatively faint, but audible "Boring" chant.
While it was obvious the plan was to build Lesnar into something special with an extraordinarily dominant performance (and Cena absolutely deserves the credit he has been receiving from fans and critics alike for his willingness and ability to sacrifice his legacy and absorb considerable punishment in fulfilling his critical role in the game plan), my gut feeling while watching was that the one-sidedness was so extreme that it would be difficult for me to pretend Cena would even stand a chance in the rematch coming at Night of Champions.
Furthermore, if a 15-time world champion like Cena (who actually beat Brock a while back) is made to look so impotent against the revitalized Lesnar, who else on the roster can realistically be expected to be viewed as competition for the former UFC champ?
Don't get me wrong, once Lesnar ended Undertaker's Mania streak, the only sensible thing to do was to go full steam ahead with him and put him over Cena for the belt. And he should have looked dominant doing so, but they went so far down that road that nobody on the current roster would appear to stand a chance of even competing with Lesnar right now or in the near future, certainly not Cena in a rematch, not Roman Reigns down the road at Mania and not Daniel Bryan if he were to somehow make it back into the title hunt further down the road after his return from injury.
To me, that is the biggest problem WWE has created for itself with the current storyline. Lesnar's reported limited contract dates also will likely mean the belt won't be defended at house shows, but that is a smaller problem. Time will tell how this all works out.