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Backstage: After the announcers talked up the deck stacked against Cena tonight, they cut to Josh Mathews for an interview with Randy Orton. Orton methodically marched through a death and destruction promo on Cena before their WWE Title match at the PPV. We’ll mark that generic promo #1 tonight. Just didn’t catch the viewer for why they should order the PPV on Sunday. Seemed like empty threats we’ve heard from Orton before. It was a fine promo, but WWE hasn’t booked Orton to have enough credibility for those threats to be credible.
Backstage: They showed Jericho, Show, and Orton talking strategy in their locker room. Show said he’s got him
WWE champion JOHN CENA vs. RANDY ORTON & Unified tag champions CHRIS JERICHO & BIG SHOW — gauntlet non-title match
Orton’s music hit and he slowly made his way to the ring for the third part that never really started. Cena sold tremendous back pain as Orton was on his one-step-every-five-minutes pace. Orton stared into the ring as Cena tried to pull himself up by the ropes. Orton did his heelish slight turn of the head look as Cena told him to hurry up and come get some. Bell sounded and Cena seemed to be in a different state of mind. Orton slowly walked over to him, but Cena pointed to the top of the building and the Cell started to lower down. Orton looked around, then Cena tackled him. They wrestled around with The Viper trying to slither away, but Cena kept him inside the ring as the Cell slowly lowered down to the ring. Apparently all of the work from the tag champs meant nothing at this point. (Plausible explanation is that Orton took forever to get in the ring so Cena had time to recover.)
Orton finally escaped Cena, but he couldn’t make it out of the Cell in time. Orton turned back to look into the ring where Cena was preparing for a fight. Cena smiled and looked around and noticed the door was open over his shoulder. Cena rubbed his hands together, then Orton made a dash for the door. Orton side-stepped Cena and landed outside the Cell, but Cena grabbed him for an FU. Orton instead climbed onto the Cell walls and started climbing to the roof. Cena followed him up and they both found themselves on top of the Cell. Orton saw he was trapped, then Cena grappled him and landed an FU on top of the Cell. Cena stood tall over Orton, who remained motionless. Cena then fired himself up and celebrated in front of the crowd. They closed with an underneath shot of Orton sprawled like a CSI crime scene. Cena did one last celebration to close the show.
WINNER: No official announcement. Well, the work from Jericho and Show was pretty pointless since SuperCena just shook it all off. Orton didn’t have much credibility as a heel here. Jericho and Show did all the work, then he wasted it all away in the match storyline. Cena stood tall to close the show to give viewers a happy note. WWE took the “we’ll make them feel good about life and want to pay money to see Orton get even more of a beating on Sunday” route to sell the PPV main event along with a little involvement from the Cell as a selling point. We’ll see if it works.
Randy you looked GREAT last night on RAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE RANDY ORTON!!!!!!!!!!
Opened: July 16th, 2004
