This was for Batista’s WWE Title.
Maybe I am out to lunch, but I love this match.
It is entirely possible. I love lunch, ater all. I have never run into anybody who liked this match, or even just this match up as much as I do. It isn’t as flashy as Cena’s matches against independent greats or as ambitious as his work against smaller WWE project guys like Edge or Randy Orton, so combined with the two pay-per-view gimmick matches that followed this not being on the level of this or the inaugural SummerSlam 2008 meeting, it often gets forgotten. I’m not really even saying that it’s some top five Cena pairing (might not be top ten), but I’ve always had a real soft spot for this pairing, and especially for this match.
Narratively, I think it’s some of the better hand-in-glove, machine working like it’s supposed to, where the wrestlers and promotion find a wonderful mutually beneficial balance style work of Cena’s career as the Ace, and in Batista’s career period.
After finally collapsing under the weight of trying and failing to be The Man on Smackdown (mostly, save like a year on Raw where he broke Cena’s neck in what was previously their only ever meeting as top stars) for the last half-decade, Batista comes back around to steal the WWE Title from John Cena. What followed over the month between that and this was the greatest character run of Big Dave’s career, with no one ultra-memorable piece, but a ton of great little lines and the super super memorable SPOTLIGHT PLEASE bit. Not only was it super entertaining, Batista finally with something that felt like it genuinely suited him rather than trying to fit into a pre-ordained role, but the contrast provided made for a very very interesting story. In order to get the title back, Cena has something very sorely needed at this point, an entirely new challenge. Not only a guy who’s bigger, stronger, and who both beat and injured him in their only ever meeting, but the only real generation rival left (in the WWE), and a total character contrast in every way.
You don’t just get a chance at this every month, so for once I am not going to hurl the company under the bus (although with better planning and an ounce of care, they could have it far more often than they do), but it’s something close to the ideal situation, as a match that not only feels big in terms of the fight aspect of throwing stars at each other, but interesting from a character perspective too.
It’s, maybe secretly, one of the better WWE Title match builds of the entire decade.
The match itself also rules.
Cena and Batista succeed in large part because they either seem to know their limitations or simply have better judgment than most, both in terms of what’s best for them, but also given their spot on the card as the semi-main event. They are not interested in a whole lot of nearfalls or shortcuts, the drama of the thing is better served with just a few of them, and instead have the sort of match that, when done correctly, always impresses me so much.
Again, it’s that WCW main event style.
Huge momentum swings, what feels like very little wasted time or unnecessary movement, what feel like a constant attempt to be trying to win the match as quickly as possible as you imagine actual fighters might want to do if this shit was real, and above all, a real feeling of importance to everything. They nail every single important bit of a match like this from the obvious basic mechanical execution to the dramatic swings to the basic feeling of a match like this, with significant help from it happening in a gigantic stadium this time.
It’s always a pleasure when a match like this works out, and with these two, it ought not to be a surprise at all.
John Cena has had to — and will have to in the future — play to the egos and ambitions of others in many of his feature matches, but more than anyone to come along this century, he is such a Sting guy. Batista, a little more quietly, has always had the predisposition for this sort of wrestling in him too. The natural impulse is to look at the big Undertaker match from three years earlier, a tremendous display of huge momentum swings and a match where it always felt like every shot was a try at a finish, but there’s a lot more on his resume that fits the bill when you dig into television work against CM Punk or MVP or Finlay. He needs a little help, but as a guy who is all big dramatic swings for way way way beyond the fences, he’s perfect for this.
The match itself is relatively basic, but it all works like it should.
Big Dave overpowers Cena like before, but as a meaner version of himself, also attacks the neck he hurt a year and a half prior. The construction is especially impressive, not only never really letting Cena breathe or have a full comeback, but doing it in such a way that doesn‘t so much feel like they’re prolonging it and trying to subvert expectations, but feels like Batista simply has him figured out. Cena feel under the gun in a way he hasn‘t in a long time, not like the fake Overcoming The Odds stuff you would get against a Big Show or whoever that he was always going to beat, but in a way where the comeback feels like a real achievement.
Add in a few great cut-offs that Batista‘s size makes feel grosser than usual like the FU block into a DDT, along with the expected repeat of the mid-air Batista Bomb counter, all leading into a more final flurry, and they manage to thread they needle, creating a large scale struggle worthy of a huge building, but without the match ever feeling like it’s trying to be a Great Match, as so many others going forward would fail to do.
Dave, in the end, makes the mistake he was always going to make as a wrestler and a character, and most importantly, it‘s also the exact one that John Cena would never make.
He gets a little shaken up when the previous big move fails, tries to repeat the Batista Bomb without any variance in the set up or anything preceding it. In effect, getting lazy and leaning on natural advantages, while John Cena never does. He manages a shocking sunset flip counter to the third Batista Bomb, into the STFU, and while it‘s not the best possible finish to the match (top rope FU probably), it’s still a pretty great thematic end to the struggle when the big man taps out, rather than try to fight anymore. When faced with having to do real hard work, one of them kept going and the other one didn’t. Not everything ought to be so black and white, but in this case, with a hero and villain this great, it feels nearly exactly right.
Cena overcomes a major setback that he couldn‘t in their first meeting, adapts to Batista in a way that Batista failed to adapt to him, and on the biggest show of the year, finds a way to achieve one of the few things he hadn‘t previously, through that wonderful combination of like mostly guts and enough brains to make it work. Ideal babyface stuff on display, showing once again that the simplest concepts not only can still work when done this correctly, but that more often than not, they’re the best concepts around.
The best match on the show.
HANDWERK 