John Cena vs. Randy Orton (WWE - 8/26/2007)

To think, there was a time when this was a never-before-seen dream match. I remember hearing that in the wake of the Benoit tragedy, WWE made a conscious effort to re-educate the fans to accept slower-paced matches with fewer high-risk maneuvers. And when you need to slow things down, of course you turn to Orton. But in all seriousness, this is actually pretty spectacular, like a WWE version of Tenryu/Hashimoto or Choshu/Hashimoto. There’s nothing fancy, but their absolute commitment to getting every hold and strike over as meaningful makes this more than the sum of its parts. There’s even a big beefy lock-up at the beginning. Cena thrives on momentum, so Orton’s gameplan is to slow things to a crawl and shut Cena down whenever he tries to pick up the pace. I’ll concede that a match built largely around chinlocks has a pretty hard ceiling, but if this match doesn’t reach that ceiling, it comes close. For one thing, Orton works his chinlocks like he’s trying to rip his opponent’s head off. In addition, he had RKOed Cena onto a chair on Saturday Night’s Main Event eight days beforehand, so he had extra reason to target the head region. Cena’s selling is amazing, particularly of Orton’s punches. It’s not just the stumbling around, it’s the look on his face that gives the impression that he’s been genuinely knocked loopy. Just when it seems that Cena is on his last legs, Orton can’t help himself from going for the punt. He had gotten to that point by playing small ball, and swinging for the fences ends up costing him when Cena reverses into an STFU (a move name that sounded stupid at the time and is positively embarrassing today). Orton makes the ropes and lands an RKO when Cena tries to press the advantage. But he can’t cover immediately due to the damage to his leg (which the STF also targets). Moreover, he can’t execute a proper cover and simply drapes his arm over Cena’s body, enabling Cena to barely get his shoulder up. Amazing how that one risk by Orton ended up backfiring on multiple levels. That’s the kind of subtle nuanced storytelling you hardly ever see in WWE. Orton’s completely thrown off his game at this point and makes the cardinal mistake of trying to pull Cena to his feet, allowing him to hit the FU out of nowhere. This match probably deserved a better ending, but it seemed to be intended to set up a Cena/Orton gimmick match that we never got due to Cena’s injury. Thanks a lot, Mr. Kennedy.