4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Feb 21)

2. The Setup That Nobody Wants

WWE took two big steps to setting-up John Cena & Nikki Bella vs. The Miz & Maryse for WrestleMania last night. The match has been rumoured for weeks, and after Maryse became inadvertently embroiled in the Natalya/Nikki Bella brawl at Elimination Chamber, the escalation was inevitable. Maryse cost Nikki her match (and feud) with Natalya last night, while Miz eliminated Cena from the battle royal, which puts all the pieces in-place for a match few people want to see.

The tag bout still feels like a huge waste of Cena and Miz. Nikki is a fine wrestler herself, but Maryse has never been particularly good in the ring, and intergender tag bouts are often disjointed and clunky. It's disappointing that this is the best thing WWE could come up with for Cena, their most important wrestler, and a singles match between him and Miz would almost certainly fare better.

The way WWE handled the set-up was strange, too. Miz's elimination of Cena was sneaky and underhand, but there are no disqualifications in a battle royal. Cena should probably understand this by now, but no: it took four referees to eventually convince him to quash his diva strop and leave the ringside area following his elimination. His sense of entitlement seems to grow by the week, and if he continues at this rate, it'll be hard to root for him at WrestleMania.