[2006-04-02-WWE-WrestleMania XXII] John Cena vs Triple H

[ohtani's jacket]

lol at Triple H's King Conan entrance. It was better than Cena's entrance. The crowd was electric for this and the split crowd made for quite the spectacle. Even JR admitting that he couldn't relate to Cena gave the match a different feel from the typical JR commentary. He leaned into the blue collar aspect of Cena's gimmick vs. Triple H being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, even though the latter hadn't been part of Triple H's gimmick for a while, and of course there were the obligatory football mentions, but it was straight hearing JR call a match where he wasn't slobbering over the babyface. The match was well laid out. In fact, I thought it was the best Cena match in quite some time given how disappointing the Angle/Michaels feud was. Credit should go to Triple H for not sabotaging the match, I suppose. He brought his A game. I liked that they kept it simple and didn't try to do too much. The crowd was stunned when Triple H tapped. It's hilarious to me that after Triple H's reign of terror, the crowd hated Cena so much that they welcomed a Triple H title win. That's some serious backlash. It was cool that they leaned into it instead of ignoring it, even though Cena must have felt a little hurt. 

[Superstar Sleeze]

WWE Champion John Cena vs Triple H - WrestleMania XXII

Surprisingly, I have never seen this before. I remember as a teenager thinking this feud/program was pretty flat. This was the last WrestleMania to be held in an arena and as they would move into Stadiums the next year and never look back. I wonder if they did some market research and they noticed they got a lot of fly-ins. The hot chick that is at the front row of every WrestleMania was this show, but not in the front row but they showed her twice. Maybe she is from Chicago but thats what made me think oh did they start getting fly-ins and realized they could go bigger. 

I have to say Vince's booking of Cena's opponents was pretty immaculate. Taking the title off the undeserving, chickenshit JBL. Ramping up to low-end Main Eventers Jericho and Angle. Booking back to back WrestleManias against the 90s Old Guard HHH & HBK. The HHH has the double whammy of getting the last bit of heel juice out of HHH before he embraced being a nostalgia act with Shawn reuniting D-X. Elevating Edge in 2006 and Orton in 2007 and throw in a couple monsters like Umaga and Khali. Really strong stuff. I think 2008 he had a misfire. He should have run Cena/Batista at Mania that year and then run Cena/Taker at Summerslam because you cant run Cena/Taker at Mania because of the Streak. That would have been gangbusters. Compare to what Vince did Roman Reign, this was borderline perfect booking especially the 2005-2007. The smartest thing he did was not giving in and turning Cena heel. He was way more over with the split reaction. The "smart" fans would have cooled immediately he was going to get way more heat with the polarized reaction. I skipped the Angle feud, but the split reaction was evident during both the Jericho and Edge matches. This was the first one with overwhelmingly boos for Cena and the Lets Go Cena/Cena Sucks chant that I have heard. Triple H "buried" Cena during the run up saying Cena Cant Wrestle which basically gave permission to all the smart fans to rabidly turn on Cena with "You Cant Wrestle" and "Cena Sucks" chants, but "smart" fans are the easiest to work. They gave them the ultimate heel and the kids the ultimate babyface. The Cena Experiment was genius. The gist of the story was that HHH was going to outwrestle Cena which is laughable because it is not like HHH is fucking Funk or Brisco but whatever. 

Funnily enough, HHH actually wrestles at the beginning which was a pleasant surprise. He does the same bit of chain wrestling Hulk Hogan does whenever he feels the need to chain wrestle. He does a hammerlock. JR makes a big to do about it. If they actually carried the story through the match I would have been impressed. I really liked Cena going for the FU and HHH's response being a hard, straight right. Sells the desperation. Then they work a weird sequence where HHH feels like the babyface with Cena working on a heat segment. HHH does the Harley bump over the top, but after HHH pokes him in the eye they go back to the traditional face/heel dynamics. Then the match becomes a typical HHH match. Typical knee-based offense. Some cutoffs. Nothing spectacular. HHH Sleeper. They make Cena run through his Comeback twice because HHH did a Spinebuster on the first 5 Knuckle Shuffle attempt they should have been more creative getting HHH back in position for that. STFU. They kick in the finish stretch HHH low blows Cena and the ref simultaneously. Suck It! Foreshadowing the DX Reunion. Sledgehammer ugh. Kickout. Double Ugh.  FU 1-2-NO! It is WrestleMania BAY BAY! Cena misses top rope crossbody. HHH Pedigree NOPE STFU the tease the pass out but HHH a heel does the right thing and taps out. 

LOL at HHH protecting the Pedigree more than the Sledgehammer! They had a WAY BETTER match at a random Night of Champions in 2008 that I covered with Scott & JT on PTB Podcast. If it was not for the electric crowd, this was a pretty ho-hum match. They had an interesting story but because you know HHH does not actually wrestle it was going to be abandoned. It was a typical soulless HHH heat segment with an alright finish run tacked on. HHH is better than Edge easily. I would put HHH & Jericho at about the same level in my head but Jericho had the better Cena matches in my opinion. The Night of Champions 2008 match is shockingly good watch that. Skip this. ***