Over the course of the past few months on Monday Night Raw, WWE superstars Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio have been involved in an odd feud. The premise of it is solid, as Rollins continues to show off his "Monday Night Messiah" gimmick, with the added bonus of him going after a living legend like Mysterio. This could easily be a scorching hot feud with Rollins focusing his cult-like flair to bringing down Mysterio and preying on him when he is most vulnerable.

Instead, the feud has taken a strange twist. After another altercation between the two, things took a violent turn as Rollins began to push Mysterio's eye into the corner of the steel steps until it drew kayfabe blood. This led to a continuation of their rivalry -- and a number of subsequent attempted eye-gougings -- until Mysterio announced that, at Extreme Rules, the stipulation for their match will be an "Eye for an Eye" match.

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This is a mistake for so many reasons. The first and most obvious is how tasteless this stipulation is, followed closely by how it's going to actually affect the match. The match must now stay hyper-focused on each wrestler trying to gouge out the other's eye. So, what the audience can now expect is essentially a collection of spots that will make them squirm at the level of cringe-inducing violence involved.

The wrestling itself will most likely be in close quarters at a slow pace, to spotlight the brutality of these eye-focused spots. Beyond the uncomfortable premise of watching two people try try pry each other's eyes out, this is such a failing on WWE's part to showcase two of its best performers.

Rey Mysterio and Seth Rollins are two of the best wrestlers on in the WWE -- and arguably, the world. To have their pay-per-view match be weighed down with a focus on eye on eye violence is a crime. This match can -- and should -- be a fast-paced, athletic barn-burner. Unfortunately, thanks to this ridiculous stipulation, that prospect now seems unlikely.

If WWE was dead set on giving the two a violent match, there are so many other types of matches it could have gone with to for Extreme Rules. A hardcore match or steel cage match could still bring out the severity of this feud without handcuffing the work-rate between the two competitors. They could have a "Three Stages of Hell" match with each one having a different extreme stipulation. The "Eye for an Eye" stipulation is just a flat failure on creative's part.

There's also the fact that the feud is failing to take full advantage of its inclusion of Mysterio's son, Dominick. There is a clear desire by both the WWE and Dominick himself to begin his in-ring career soon. Having him become a part of the stipulation would have been far more dramatic than focusing the feud on gouged eyes.

While Rollins may consider himself the "Monday Night Messiah," at present he only has two actual followers who take his word at gospel, not including the one referee. To raise the stakes of the match, the WWE could have booked it to be for whether or not Dominik has to join Rollins and his disciples. Focusing on Mysterio's eye just diminishes what could have easily been a marquee feud.

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While it seems like the WWE remains dead set on this being an "Eye for an Eye" match, it should certainly not be. The possibilities between these two performers are absolutely endless, yet under the current storyline, they have been severely limited. Rollins' new character doesn't benefit from gouging out Mysterio's eye in storyline, nor does Mysterio benefit from doing the same to Rollins. The stakes should remain high, but under an entirely new premise that actually does justice to this feud instead of going for cheap shock value.

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