My spine crawls to see a Wrestlemania main event feud being botched in the way that the Triple H/Batista feud currently is. Crawls.

Here you have a feud that people have been waiting to see for ages, a feud that's slowly been building up over the past few months until it officially kicked off with Batista turning on Hunter and powerbombing him through a table on Raw a few weeks ago. So the feud literally started off with a bang, but it's been poorly built ever since. Poorly built how? For the simple reason that the World Champion, the top guy in either company, a guy who's stood his ground against big guys from Taker to Big Show, is being made to tuck his tail between his legs and run away from Batista every single damn episode of Raw. It's unrealistic. It's a disgrace.

Since when did Triple H's character become such a pussy? As a Hunter fan I'm finding it hard to sit back and watch the man's credibility as a killer heel fly out the window every week. As a wrestling fan I'm finding it hard to to sit back and watch a feud that I've been looking forward to for a long time now completely fail to live up to what it should have been. Imagine if the Rock/Austin feud had been built like this, with Rock running away from Austin every single week. Would the interest in the match at Wrestlemania have been as great as it was? Hell no. Now, imagine if the current Hunter/Batista feud was being built like the Rock/Austin feud, with both guys standing toe-to-toe, staring each other down, enough intensity in the ring to suffocate everybody within the first five rows. Imagine if they were being portrayed as equals. Because there's no reason they shouldn't be; Batista might be bigger, but Hunter is a ten-time World Champion and has beaten plenty of guys bigger than Batista. So imagine for one second that this feud was being built like the Rock/Austin feud- how much more would you be looking forward to these two locking up at Wrestlemania? What do we have to look forward to instead? Hunter cowering against the turnbuckles liked a whipped urchin? What, is he just going to magically grow the balls he's been missing for the past month and actually manage to stand up to Dave? If he doesn't have them now, why should he have them at the PPV?

I've seen some of the most amusing excuses for the horrible build-up of this match imaginable.

One was, Dave needs to be protected. Does he? The guy's over HUGE right now. The fans have taken to him on a level I haven't seen since Austin started to become big during 1996/1997. How is Hunter standing up to him going to "hurt" him? Especially when, at the same time Hunter is backing down week after week, you've got Ric Flair constantly getting up in Dave's face and screaming at him. Ric isn't afraid of Batista, but Hunter is? What the hell?????

Another one was, the feud is being built perfectly and Dave should roll right over Hunter at Wrestlemania in less than ten minutes, no-sell everything, and become the WWE's version of Goldberg. *blink* Read over that a few times and let it sink in. It implies that 1) the Wrestlemania main event should be under ten minutes, screwing over every single fan who paid to see it, 2) Dave should just mystically become invincible after he's been selling for his entire career, and should no-sell against the top guy in the company, which would logically automatically render any of his future opponents unable to hurt him and is just plain unrealistic and ridiculous, and that 3) having a new Goldberg-like character would be good either for WWE or for Batista. It was WCW's building up Goldberg to be invincible that eventually led to Goldberg's flopping in WWE. Building him up to be invincible turned out to be a huge mistake, because when he eventually had to lose to people in WWE, the fans didn't buy it. You can never have a character who's invincible. It just does not work in wrestling. It would become too predictable and boring, and when he did eventually start to sell for his opponents, the myth of his "invincibility" would be shattered and the character would be done. So anybody who thinks Dave should be built this way, is just plain out of their minds or doesn't understand the business well enough to know how much this idea sucks.

Having Hunter act like a complete chickenshit every week also kills a lot of the hype for their 'Mania match. Nobody in their right mind expects a chickenshit heel to have a chance against the beastly Batista. The only way it could happen is if Hunter uses every possible foreign object that can fit under the ring. That possibility aside, most non-smark fans at this stage expect Dave to completely own Hunter at Wrestlemania, simply because it hasn't been established even once that Hunter can actually get a one-up on him. I'll take it back to Austin and Rock yet again. If Rock had gotten his ass handed to him by Austin every single week leading up to their match at, say, Wrestlemania 15 (since they've had three Mania matches), would anybody have expected Rock to have a chance, or been surprised when he lost? Nope.