Smark Out Moment

Welcome to another edition of Cheap Pop and Cheap Heat from Smark Out Moment!

Each week, we break down the world of professional wrestling and examine two of the polar opposite ends of the spectrum: one thing that was by far the worst thing (Cheap Heat) and the best thing (Cheap Pop) to happen over the past 7 days in sports entertainment. So, what went down this week that we loved and hated about the business?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The phenomenal Ross K. Foad - the usual author of Cheap Pop & Cheap Heat - is off duty this week. I typically write the Divas Debrief but I will be filling in for Ross today and I'll try not to let him or his readers down.


There was a lot of head-scratching last week over WWE's failure to properly capitalize on Roman Reigns following his big win over Randy Orton at SummerSlam. On Raw the night after, Reigns was booked in a pretty snooze-worthy six-man tag team match where he sort of just floated around in the background, and that was it.

While Reigns probably should have gotten much more impressive material last Monday, it became obvious on Raw this week why they held off on committing him to anything major; he was about to crash a mourning ceremony.

Okay, so there was no actual mourning involved. Seth Rollins, accompanied by his trusty corporate monster Kane, gave a eulogy for the dearly misplaced Dean Ambrose. Rollins bragged about creating and destroying The Shield and said that if only Ambrose had known his place, Rollins wouldn't have needed to Curb Stomp him into a pile of fake cinder blocks.

But The Shield consisted of three men, and the third didn't feel like being left out. Roman Reigns made his way through the crowd and ran through Seth Rollins and Kane in what turned out to be a supremely exciting segment.

Sure, the whole thing wound up in a much less riveting two-on-one handicap match later in the night, but the eulogy stands alone and has opened the door for the long-anticipated Reigns/Rollins program. Plus, that handicap match gave us an awesome spot where Reigns threw a cinder block at Rollins' head. The fact that he missed actually turned out to be even more visually stunning, since the block shattered into a million pieces when it hit the ring post.

So the question arises: will we get Roman Reigns versus Seth Rollins at Night of Champions? It seems that way, but it's a little early to tell, especially now that rumors have begun swirling that Dean Ambrose may be back from filming for WWE Studios - I mean, back from whatever mysterious place to which he fled after his injury last week - in time to team with Reigns to face Rollins and Kane in a tag match. I sincerely hope this is not the match we're getting unless it serves to further the Reigns and Rollins feud and leads to an even bigger one-on-one match down the road.

Whatever the case, hopefully we'll someday soon get to see that Shield triple threat match.


We should have seen this coming. We should have known better.

The SummerSlam main event had us all practically drooling after finally getting to see John Cena take one for the team and get completely decimated at the hands of Brock Lesnar and his sixteen German Suplexes. It did absolutely no harm to Cena and gave us our most credible, believable WWE Champion in the past decade. It seemed too good to be true.

To think WWE would just let that go without taking two steps back in the name of keeping John Cena's name from being rolled in the mud was foolish. Our castle of cheer came crashing down around us in Raw's main event this week as John Cena and Bray Wyatt clashed in a WrestleMania rematch.

Right off the bat, when you hear that match announced you get a little nervous. Bray just spent months getting utterly shown up by John Cena and never got the rub he deserved from the fifteen-time World Champion. Cena has a huge rematch coming up in four weeks and you knew he wasn't going to lose to Wyatt on Raw. Meanwhile, a screwy finish in any main event sucks a little and we certainly didn't need Wyatt doing the job to Cena for a third time, so there was just no way this was going to end well.

And it didn't end well, but it was so much worse than we could have anticipated. John Cena tore Bray Wyatt apart with offense that largely resembled what Brock Lesnar used to squash Cena at SummerSlam.

To diverge for just a moment, I want to point out how bad an idea this was to begin with. John Cena using the same moves Lesnar used to punk him out last Sunday just makes Cena look like a pouty child who got beat at basketball by the cool kid at school and decided to start mimicking him in an attempt at redemption, even though he's nowhere near as good a basketball player as the cool kid.

So Cena is throwing Bray Wyatt around the ring like a rag doll and the match ends in a disqualification after Erick Rowan and Luke Harper jump in. Big Show and Mark Henry make the save and thus we have a six man tag team match, which Cena, Show and Henry win after Cena makes Harper tap out.

I'll say it again.

John Cena made Luke Harper tap out.

And then he continued to rip apart the entire Wyatt Family post-match, all on his own. So not only do the younger Wyatt Family members, who are the future of WWE, lose a big main event to three men who have each been huge company stars for at least ten years, but they also can't handle John Cena all by himself.

I get the thought process behind booking Cena to look powerful. He needs to provide a believable threat to Brock Lesnar and after Lesnar beating him so decisively that's no easy task. But this was undeniably the lowest point of the week based solely on the fact that the Wyatt Family looked totally helpless in this, at times, three-on-one scenario.

It seems to have been a slow decline for Bray Wyatt in particular as of late and his messages of eating worlds and ending suffering through destruction are starting to ring just a bit hollow and feel a little less eerie.

See guys! I can do it just like Mister Brock!

That's it for this unusual edition of Cheap Pop & Cheap Heat! Ross will be back next week to take back his baby and hopefully not find that I've alienated all his readers.