Turning Bryan heel, much less then giving him the belt before Mania.....it sounds illogical and pointless at this stage. So he'd turn heel just because he'd cash it in early, presumably against a beaten champ for the easy win? Eh, this has repetitively happened at least once every year since MITB started, and Del Rio will inevitably be that guy to do it again if it happens. So very slim chance of that happening I'd say. This is one angle I think WWE will stick to actually and he will be build up decent going into Mania, and will probably even end up getting the belt then as it fills that token underdog makes good storyline that is almost a given every Mania. WWE title is clearly the real prize in the company now more than ever so it wont mean as much as it could or should, but if/when it happens it will still be fun.
I was at the show last night and it was a predictable and basic show, much more than I expected really...and I had already kind of low expectations. It might have been the hell that was sitting through NXT Redemption though that got me not feeling most of the show from that point. And then Superstars too, although both of those matches (Kidd/Gabriel and Natty/Alicia) were actually good. The SD taping actually went very quick, so its going to be alot of pretape stuff from Raw and the ppv I'm guessing. Although I gotta say for as much as the show was dull and drab for the most part, the Kane/Orton match was much better than it had any right to be. They did some good brawling outside the ring and not sure if this has been reported much, but Orton slipped through one of the tv slot holes while standing on top of the announcers table and may have fucked up his leg/quad a bit. It looked far worse than I think it ended up being, but it was kind of weird as Orton first sold it like it really got hurt, and then two seconds later he stands up and shakes it off and laughs about it apparently. They even show this on the match replay after the match so it's not going to be edited in any manner I guess.
The dark match main event was street fight number two in a row for Orton as he worked with Christian in what was one of the safest street fights in history. Christian even beat Orton down (and he sold it) with a padding part of the ringside area barricades....it was pretty ridiculous. Orton also was still either now selling the table botch or else was still a big legit messed up. One thing about this match though that made it a step up from usual dark stuff after TV tapings......it went about 10-15 minutes which is normally unheard of. Dibiase and Rhodes ran in out of nowhere to distract Orton too, which was a bit weird to have them revisit things from 16 months back but oh well.
