WWE Has Failed to Make the John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar Rematch Compelling

Despite some tremendous mic work from Paul Heyman, it's hard to fight the feeling that WWE has failed to make the September 21 rematch between Brock Lesnar and John Cena at Night of Champions compelling or a must-see bout.

Going in, it was always going to be a tough task. Lesnar absolutely destroyed Cena at the SummerSlam pay-per-view, essentially making him look like a jobber on the level of Zack Ryder or Heath Slater.

How were the WWE writers supposed to convince people that Cena had anything resembling a decent chance the second time around? They may have put over Lesnar hugely in Los Angeles, but they also made it tough to promote a rematch.

Credit: WWE.com

The bookers haven't helped themselves with some of the patchy material they've churned out over the past few weeks, either.

Sure, Heyman attempting to turn Cena to the dark side could have been an interesting storyline, but it's been ruined by muddled and incoherent booking.

The frankly preposterous angle on Monday's Raw in which Cena essentially kidnapped Heyman, locked him in his locker room and had The Great Khali guard him for a while until the evil manager could produce Lesnar was some truly perplexing television—kidnapping is apparently PG.

OK, so it was mildly amusing to see Heyman futilely attempt to reason with the giant, but, come on, is the main event scene really the place for Khali's midcard comedy antics? Of course not.

Credit: WWE.com

Lesnar vs. Cena at Night of Champions is supposed to be a serious main event match that will attract pay-per-view buyers and new WWE Network subscribers. It is not and should never be a comedy angle.

But perhaps the main issue is that, as noted, no one can truly believe Cena has a genuine shot of defeating Lesnar in Nashville, Tennessee.

The star may have looked more credible on Monday's Raw—he took the fight to Lesnar and showed some genuine fire for the first time in a while—but honestly, what has changed?

Has Cena been examining one Lesnar match after another in a bid to find and exploit his foe's weaknesses like a UFC fighter would? Has he changed his training regime to better prepare himself? Has he altered his diet? Well, if he has, he certainly hasn't mentioned it to anyone.

As it is, we are just supposed to believe he has a better shot this time around because, well, he says he does. It's not exactly convincing.

Sadly, at a time when WWE is struggling to keep its pay-per-view events relevant—more and more of these shows are coming off as glorified Raws—it doesn’t look like the Night of Champions main event is going to turn things around.

Is anyone that keen to see Lesnar and Cena square off again?