History Rewritten: WrestleMania XXIV

In this Edition of "History Rewritten", I would like to revisit another clustered match that should have been kept to a one on one match at WrestleMania. Like Rock vs. Triple H, I believe that John Cena vs. Randy Orton should have happened at WrestleMania. Cena and Orton's careers paralleled each other the same way that Rock and Triple H did.

Background:
By Summer-Fall 2007, Randy Orton emerged as a stronger threat to John Cena's WWE Championship when he injured him with the RKO on the chairs. Cena would be forced to vacate the Title, ending his 380 day reign as champion (longest of his career). Orton proves himself to become the next major threat to John Cena as he is awarded the WWE Championship at No Mercy. However, Triple H defeated him that same night to win the title. Orton would have the last laugh that night as he won the belt back from The Game. In one night, Randy Orton became a two-time WWE Champion. From that point, The Age of Orton was underway. Randy was very impressive heading into WrestleMania season with feuds against Jeff Hardy, Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho. On the other hand, John Cena returned from injury to win the Royal Rumble. Naturally, Cena and The Viper were on a crash course for WrestleMania as they would have one of the premiere feuds of the Modern Era of Wrestling.

What Ruined It:
Instead of waiting for WrestleMania, Cena decides to use his exclusive Number One Contendership to wrestle Orton for the title at No Way Out, a month before their Mania encounter. Even though Triple H had an established feud with Orton, I believe that this was not the time to insert him into the mix as they would settle things at WrestleMania XXV. As a result, the WWE Title match became a Triple Threat match. I am clearly not a proponent for Triple Threat of Four Way Title matches when it comes to WrestleMania. Like WM 2000, this further proves my point as to why these type of matches are not the best idea for the WWE Title.

 

 

Rewrite:

Plain and simple, get Triple H out of the Title picture, and have him wait for the next PPV. As I said before, him and Randy had the next WrestleMania to look forward to. Meanwhile, it still boggles the mind that one of the flagship rivalries of our generation never had a one on one match. Hogan & Andre had their match. Hogan & Savage had their match. Bret & Shawn had their main event. Austin & Rock headlined three WrestleManias every two years. Granted, Cena & RKO are not quite at that level, but their feud is high profile enough to deserve such a match. With that said, I will reconstruct this match so that it will be John Cena vs. Randy Orton. Since Cena is a face, I would normally have him win the match. However, I would like to switch things up and have Randall Keith win this match. After all, it is not like they were closing the show anyway. It was not much for me to really reconstruct, bu I just felt that this was a glaring omission for Cena & Orton. This is my way of rewriting that history.