Cesaro is above the IC Title? No, he's not. Unless Austin, Rocky, and HHH were all above the IC Title when they won it.
Ambrose has made the US Championship meaningless? That's something booking has done.
Unifying the IC and U.S. Titles is a bad idea unless you're bringing back the European Championship.
The finals of the tournament should be Barrett and Cesaro (Cesaro's being pushed, so there's no reason for him not to go over RVD and Barrett going over Sheamus makes him look great, not to mention the fact that, in both cases, it's a guy who has never been a world champion going over a guy who has been a world champion.....you don't promote guys to the upper midcard/main event level much better than that). From there, I see either Barrett winning the tournament because Swagger costs Cesaro the victory or Cesaro wins the tournament. I then see the tourney winner going to defeat Big E at ER for the IC Title. This is a good thing, no matter who wins it, and it will be a boost to either man's career.
If Barrett is the IC Champion, I see him being transitional until Cesaro disposes of the Swagger feud and then Cesaro will become IC Champion. If Cesaro goes on to win the title from Big E, his first defensive feud will be against Swagger. I see Cesaro being the IC Champion in the same career path that Austin, Rock, and HHH all had and I do see him bringing the title back to a higher level. I also wouldn't mind seeing him defend the IC Title at some point against Roman Reigns (cue all the Reigns marks screeching "HE'S ABOVE THE IC TITLE! HE FEUD WITH HHH AND WIN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NOW!!!!!!!"), as a way to build Reigns' capacity to feud for a title and carry a major championship, so we don't get Jack Swagger's World Championship Reign 2.0.
As for Big E post-IC-title, I would actually have him feud with Ambrose for the US Championship and all of these newly-appearing NXT guys and the guys who need some "beefing up" (not just Big E, Dallas, and Rose, but also guys like Rollins, Ryder, any of the guys from 3MB (bur only if they're going to break up 3MB), Brodus Clay, Xavier Woods) need to be the guys feuding for the US Championship. I actually wouldn't mind seeing Ambrose being pushed to the upper midcard and feud for the IC Title.
I actually think Cesaro should be IC Champion and carry it for 9 - 18 months. He's a good enough wrestler and can make guys look good while also being strong enough to win a lot of matches to make the IC Title the sought-after championship it used to be, but it's going to take good booking and setting up feuds with former World Champions like Sheamus, Ziggler, Christian (if/when he comes back from concussion), RVD, etc., to make it really important.
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