By Richard Garner, Torch specialist

What a week in the WWE. Firings, resignations, at least one Wellness Policy violation, a match of the year candidate, and a disconcerting amount of title changes. In an unprecedented move, WWE put their major title on a man who they knew would need to vacate the next day. The whole situation was to the detriment of one of the company's rising stars.

With a fitness record that would make Kevin Nash blush, Batista will spend the next few months on the injured list. Yet he beat Randy Orton for the WWE title in a short cage match at Sunday night's Extreme Rules PPV. It is strange that WWE, fully aware that Batista was in need of surgery, would give him the title.

There are a number of scenarios that WWE could have booked to cover for Batista's injury. He could have been jumped by Legacy at the beginning of the Pay-Per-View and worked a short match while injured. Or maybe taken out of commission by a mystery assailant, setting up a "whodunit" angle that would be resolved on his return. But the manner in which Randy Orton suffered defeat in Sunday's cage match hardly made him look like a credible champion.

Then there was the follow up. Any wrestling fan with an Internet connection knew that Batista would have to give up the title in the near to immediate future, and the WWE shot the angle to accomplish this on Monday. Raw opened with Batista in the ring, dedicating his title win to Ric Flair. He was then jumped by Legacy in a three-on-one attack, culminating in Orton breaking Batista's arm. Following a stretcher job, there was the announcement that Randy Orton was invoking his re-match clause and that he would face Batista for the title in the main event.

Randy Orton may have got some of his heat back after the embarrassingly short cage match loss the night before, but the final segment of Raw would do him no favors. Instead of Batista returning to defend his title, Triple H returned carrying a sledgehammer. After destroying both Rhodes and DiBiase on the ramp, he had a rather one-sided brawl with Orton. The show closed with Triple H posing over a fallen Randy Orton.

There have been reports that the reason why Batista was given the title on Sunday was that he would look weak if he came up short against Randy Orton yet again. Yet if this was the case, the credibility of Orton as a heel champion was not a factor that was taken into consideration. He was comprehensively destroyed in the cage at Extreme Rules, then portrayed as being infinitely inferior to Triple H the following evening.

There are also wider issues with the way Orton has been booked, such as the fact that DiBiase and Rhodes have been made to look foolish on a weekly basis as little more than fodder for the WWE's top babyfaces. Added to which, it is difficult to judge how WWE can sell another Orton-Triple H confrontation on PPV when the fans have just seen Orton destroyed for free.

It just didn't make sense for Batista to win the title on Sunday. Randy Orton may be the top heel in the company, but being destroyed by both Triple H and Batista in the space of 24 hours will have hardly encouraged fans to pay money to see his PPV matches in the future.

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