WWE Botch of the Week: Igniting the Feud Between John Laurinaitis and John Cena

It’s pretty clear that the WWE desperately wants to reignite a feud between an authority figure and a major superstar that rivals what we saw between “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Vince McMahon in the late 1990s. 

The creative team tried it with John Laurinaitis and CM Punk at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, and it didn’t work. But now they’re trying it again, this time with Laurinaitis and John Cena. 

News flash: Recreating the magic that Austin/McMahon had hasn’t worked before, it’s not going to work with Cena/Laurinaitis and it will never work again. 

Look, I get it—the WWE had a great thing going with Austin vs. McMahon. But it’s a thing of the past, and it should stay that away. 

Feuds between heel authority figures and babyface wrestlers can be phenomenal when done right, but the WWE just doesn’t have the ammunition to pull it off this time around. 

Laurinaitis doesn’t have the charisma or the mic skills that McMahon had, and I don’t know about you, but I do not want to see him involved in a major rivalry with Cena. 

The story seems to be that Laurinaitis is throwing everything he has at Cena, but why? Just because he’s a heel, he wants the top babyface to fail? 

Austin vs. McMahon worked because Austin purposely tried to make McMahon’s life miserable, but there’s no real reason why Laurinaitis should be targeting Cena, much less facing him in a pay-per-view match. 

The best feuds gradually build up over the course of several months, but this rivalry exploded last night, and it did so out of nowhere. 

Perhaps it has something to do with Brock Lesnar’s contract, I don’t know. But I feel like Cena is being forced into a rivalry with Laurinaitis, and I have little to no faith that it will actually work. 

No one wants to pay to see Laurinaitis wrestle a pay-per-view match, and I’m even less excited about that bout now that the ever-so-boring Lord Tensai is involved in it as well. 

What’s the appeal of this feud? 

We’re either going to see Cena “Super Cena” up again and somehow manage to beat Laurinaitis even though he’ll have the help of Lord Tensai, Sakamato and possibly even Lesnar, or we’ll see it take multiple guys to beat Cena in one match. 

Either way, this is a lose-lose situation. 

We lose because we have to sit through yet another feud that focuses on an authority figure rather than a wrestler, and the WWE loses because the result of the Over the Limit match between Cena and Laurinaitis is just going to make Cena look like a superhero again. 

I know that this feud just started and that I’m probably coming across as extremely pessimistic, but I simply didn’t like the start to this Cena/Laurinaitis rivalry at all and ultimately think it will lead to a dead end. 

I may be proven wrong, but after watching Extreme Rules on Sunday, I don’t doubt that it’s going to take a wrecking ball to beat Cena from here on out. 

Thus, the question on my mind will always be, “Why even bother having a feud if it’s so damn predictable?”

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him onTwitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.