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| Dragging the Champ to Hell, I assume... Photo Credit: WWE.com |
I personally felt like I was in a minority getting excited when Stephanie McMahon telegraphed a title match between Kane and Daniel Bryan at Extreme Rules. The two have a history, and Bryan has gotten a lot more in the ring out of a lot less than what Kane can offer, even now. Still, after getting the most luxurious VIP treatment in WrestleMania history, getting Kane had to feel like a demotion, right? Even with the history between the two character, at his worst, Kane has felt like a placeholder feud, a nadir so to speak. I have noticed that with a lot of my peers on Twitter and in the intelligentsia, the tendency is to look pessimistically.
However, when Kane is dialed in, he's an elite presence on the show, a monstrous, evil aura who can stand up to any heroic figure credibly and believably. His summer feud against the Undertaker in '10 and his initial return in '11, before Zack Ryder and Eve Torres turned the angle into a campy horror parody, both sent chills down my spine.
Tonight, with each of his three neck-rattling tombstone piledrivers, he returned to that form, the one that has the makings of an incredible title program. He looked motivated, on-point, supernatural even. Just one week ago, Corporate Forme Kane was going through the motions. He was a theoretically great interpretation on an old character using a Reality Era spin who was just beaten through the same wringer that every milquetoast authority figure has gone through. But just a week later, the spark returned.
Whenever I hear that a character or a performer is ruined, I chuckle to myself, because I know that in the long term, that character's heat can rebound with the right circumstances. Kane has proven that maxim his entire career. Tonight's performance was just another example.