Alberto Del Rio's reign seems to be over for good
Remember the time when the World Heavyweight title was a mainstay on RAW? Triple H wore it, Chris Benoit wore it, Batista wore it, and Randy Orton wore it.
The WWE championship was on WWE’s second best show and then John Cena, the WWE Champion then, got drafted to Raw, and the rest is history.
The World heavyweight title is an evidence and a symbol of WWE’s triumph over WCW. And that now rests on the shoulders of Alberto Del Rio.
The man the commentators on RAW and SmackDown call “Mexico’s greatest Export”. No matter how many times that sobriquet is used and no matter how many stiff looking kicks Del Rio plants upon his opponents and no matter how many honors the WWE puts upon him (Royal Rumble Winner, Money in The Bank Winner, WWE Champion and World Heavyweight Champion) Del Rio has failed to incite interest in his character.
It is not that he’s never had any momentum. He’s had opportunities to capitalize upon, the more recent opportunity being after winning the title from Ziggler in a match touted to have witnessed a double turn at Payback in Chicago. But Del Rio has never been consistent. Never!
His promos are never really engaging except the initial stages of his heel turns. Being a heel in WWE is not easy. A great heel is complex and interesting and mostly has a great babyface to neutralize the power play.
A great hero always needs a great villain. A great heel can make people buy tickets to come and boo him. John Cena in that way is a great face and a great heel.
On the other hand, between booing and cheering is a large gap where no reaction is heard and that is when you know that the audience is bored, which is the case with most parts of Del Rio appearances.
The commentators today are much more plastic. JBL is still funny and great to hear, but today’s commentators spend a lot of their time putting over some superstars in unbelievable fashion and ignore much of the unbelievable things done by the truly exciting superstars. Del Rio is put over by them as ‘Mexico’s greatest export’. Now how the hell did he replace Eddie Guerrero from that phrase?
Even if SuperCena is showing Superhuman abilities and is returning in 3 weeks to fight, it might as well be for the best. He should win, and maybe Sandow should cash in immediately afterwards. But for all of Sandow’s spectacular mic skills, I hope WWE allows Cena to get embarrassed by Sandow more than less.
Anyway, if WWE seems to be going in that direction with the title then it seems to me that it would be best for business. Del Rio has been far too boring for far too long. He is a good wrestler, but he seems to be not able to hold the attention of the audience for much of the time. It is better to keep him away from so many championship honors and focus on how to make him consistent with his character.