How to Salvage WWE's John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar Disaster

When Brock Lesnar shockingly returned to WWE and confronted John Cena near the tail-end of one of the greatest ever's retirement tour, it was fair for fans to think they had something special in store. 

Instead…crickets, mostly.

Cena and Lesnar have such a legendary history together that it was easy to dream up ideas for encounters and choice words exchanged in promos before the match at Wrestlepalooza on Saturday. It's even the show-opening match, not the main event, apparently.

Unfortunately, it seems this latest saga on Cena's goodbye tour will suffer like some of the other moments that should've been high points.

On the go-home Raw this week before the PLE, he went out and put forth a cookie-cutter cliche promo with zero interaction from Lesnar in the slightest. 

Now, maybe that's just not how Lesnar's contract works. But the fact WWE just put Cena out there for a one-sided yap session and didn't even throw in the effort to so much as get a pre-recorded, brief message from Lesnar just seems silly. 

One could argue that there isn't much that needs said between Lesnar and Cena these days. But it still smacks a little strange to see this perceived lack of effort for the feud. A feud that, by the way, could be the last time they dance in the ring together. Think about the history-spanning videos and stuff that will chronicle this rivalry, just to have it end with a nothinburger like this. 

It doesn't help that before Cena went on Raw and cut a promo about the match, Lesnar showed up on the SmackDown a few days earlier and exchanged a promo with…R-Truth? It was a funny moment, sure, but he seemed so adamant about finding Cena that he…didn't show up on Raw a few days later?

The only way to salvage this whole thing, it seems, is to have Lesnar beat the tar out of Cena and set up a rematch for a different date. 

There are a dwindling number of those, though. Cena has a handful of apparent booked dates in November, including Survivor Series on November 29. Then, Saturday Night's Main Event in mid-December. 

But maybe that's for the better. Cena getting destroyed and needing to overcome the odds against one of his most bitter rivals one last time would be a fun throwback. It would be a nice shocker of a big match for Wrestlepalooza and doubly work to keep both guys out of the main-event scene and main championship scenes, off doing their own thing.

Still, it's an indictment on the overall WWE booking right now that Cena vs. Lesnar (of all things!) needs salvaging in the first place. It feels like booking for cheap pops and vanilla attempts to grab non-wrestling audiences for ratings. 

Which sort of leads to another conversation around Lesnar: Who is dying to see Lesnar these days, anyway? Sounds harsh, but he's soured a bit in the mainstream and for hardcore pro wrestling fans, he might be a Gunther match or bust guy at this point. 

Maybe that's not totally fair, but what conclusions are outsiders supposed to work toward when Cena and Lesnar can't even get in the ring together to exchange words before a match? If WWE wants to push Wrestlepalooza as this new big PLE presence in future years, the main event of this big return, streaming on ESPN, no less, can't get one of its headline matches a proper pro wrestling build?

Alas, the Lesnar squash. Maybe some of this is a (misguided) attempt to let non-wrestling viewers see that WWE can be more like a "real sport" akin to UFC. These two will get together with little fanfare, duke it out and go their separate ways, if not rematch. A lopsided outcome similar to those fun, old Lesnar-Goldberg quick encounters can match that energy. 

If done well, the rematch, at least, could get more hype from viewers and a little breathing room to really tell a story. As hinted, it's not like either Superstar has many must-see potential feuds open to them outside of each other right now, anyway. 

One of the beauties of pro wrestling is that good decisions can help steer clear of complete disasters and even make past mistakes look good in hindsight. A dominant Lesnar win that positions Cena as the underdog with one last serious scrap in him just feels right, even if the build to get there has been questionable.