8 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 11)

2. A New U.S. Champ

You could sit there and dissect the fact that Alberto Del Rio won the United States Championship nearly three months ago from a nearly unbeatable John Cena, then €œput€ him on the shelf last week, so he should be treated like a bigger deal €“ and thus, should be more of a threat in the ring. Then again, while Del Rio hasn€™t been neutered in the ring, he also hasn€™t set WWE on fire since his return. His U.S. title reign has been dull at best, and with the MexAmerica disaster averted, there really was no reason for Alberto to remain champion (especially since Cena won€™t be back to challenge for the title for several months). So, it made good sense to flip the title to someone new and see if he can get some mileage out of it. In this case, that person was Kalisto, the acrobatic luchador, who has been without his Lucha Dragons teammate Sin Cara due to injury. Even before that though, Kalisto has gotten a bit of a singles push, defeating Ryback in the first round of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament, and beating Kofi Kingston and Del Rio in bouts in the last two weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxMxkrmoVd8 It seems that WWE is trying to turn Kalisto into the next Rey Mysterio, right down to invoking the late Eddie Guerrero in his pre-match promo. It€™s understandable that WWE would look to replicate Rey€™s success, and hopefully Kalisto is in line for a decent push and isn€™t just a flavor of the month.