John Cena; actually BETTER than white bread!

[gadge]

Nobody. I was just poking fun at his wonderfully dangerous hurricanrana. And Fin Martin a bit, actually.

Heh cool. I was at Progress Wrestling tonight, and Jimmy Havoc hit a 'rana almost exactly like Cena. The crowd didn't bat an eyelid, as in the ebb and flow of the match they were totally caught up in supporting him against Nathan Cruz. It was brilliant, as Progress is as adult oriented a promotion as any, but the characters were over, not the moves.

[wandshogun09]

SOC is spot on about Cena vs Lashley on the last page. I brought that up before on here as well. It's incredible. No-one else (at least in my memory) ever had a very good match with Lashley, Cena went one further and pulled off a genuine blinder with big Bobby and made him look great even in losing. It was a proper chicken salad out of chicken shit performance.

 

That's a great worker, surely. Someone who can both connect with the audience and also have good matches with anyone of all styles and sizes from Big Show to Rey to Batista to Michaels to Punk to Lesnar. And can work around the limitations of someone like Lashley or Khali and make them look better than they actually are.

 

If his only good matches were against the likes of Michaels, Triple H and Angle then that's one thing. But it's surely no coincidence that the Lashleys, Khalis and Umagas had perhaps the best matches of their lives with Cena.

 

I honestly don't get how anyone in 2013 can still be spouting the Cena Sux nonsense with a straight face.

[Shane O' Mac Version 2]

If his only good matches were against the likes of Michaels, Triple H and Angle then that's one thing. But it's surely no coincidence that the Lashleys, Khalis and Umagas had perhaps the best matches of their lives with Cena.

Hey, I won't be having that. Umaga worked very well, he doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the Lashleys and Khalis of the world. His matches with Jeff Hardy were the shit as well.

 

Cena needs to be more intense and less immature jokey. He does WWE main events better than anyone not named Shawn Michaels, and he can seriously sell PPVs when he's on point, as evidenced last week on Raw. He doesn't need to be a heel, he just needs to stop trying to be funny. When he's all about the "never back down, always fight, need to win", he's fantastic on every level, absolutely brilliant.

[wandshogun09]

I didn't mean that as Umaga being shit or anything. But aside from the excellent matches with Jeff Hardy, I'd say his stuff with Cena was far and away the highlight of his career.

 

I brought that up to make the point that, for a guy who some still try to say can't work, there sure are a lot of cases of wrestlers having their best matches with Cena. Including the aforementioned Khalis, Lashleys and Umagas who weren't exactly tearing the house down with any fucker else before Cena. It's the thing you usually hear about Flair in the 80s, that he could work with anyone and 9 times out of 10 they'd come out looking better than they did going in, win or lose.

 

I'd say Edge and Punk's best matches were with Cena as well and I'm not calling them shit either. They've both had plenty of good matches, yet I thought Cena brought the absolute best out of those two. More than once.

 

I don't watch as much as I used to but when I do there's very few who match Cena as far as delivering consistently.

[Arch Stanton]

Cena still looks very awkward and robotic in the way he moves in the ring. I wouldn't call him sloppy, because he rarely botches, but his execution isn't excellent. On the mic, he can't do comedy to save his life. He's desperately unfunny. His big square face and his sticky out ears make him look like a chump. He's a bit of a dork. That's where the list of genuine criticisms end as far as I'm concerned. He's the best in the business at virtually everything else, certainly everything that matters. He's the only genuine star that isn't a semi-retired special attraction and I don't see anybody on the roster that could step up into that position should Cena decide, or be forced, to stop.

 

He's the best and most realistic character in wrestling, because you feel that what you see out there on TV is a real person and as such he's one of the very few guys that draws a real emotional response from the crowd.

[Loki]

SOC is spot on about Cena vs Lashley on the last page. I brought that up before on here as well. It's incredible. No-one else (at least in my memory) ever had a very good match with Lashley, Cena went one further and pulled off a genuine blinder with big Bobby and made him look great even in losing.

 

The only other decent Lashley match was him getting pasted by Scott Steiner in TNA. That was fun.

 

If the last decade has been about re-establishing the WWE brand as entertainment for all the family (and by that I mean, kids) then Cena's been the lynchpin. He draws crowds and sells t-shirts without swearing, blood, chairshots to the head and crotch-grabbing. He's replaced the stars of the Attitude era with the exact opposite - with a clean-cut American hero who loves the troops and says poopy.

 

Of course the older wrestling fans still boo him, but that's fine. They still turn up, and still buy the PPVs. WWE throws them a Rock or a Lashley occasionally, but it's been Cena who's taken the company on his unfeasibly broad shoulders in a way nobody has done since Hogan.

 

My personal theory on the 90s boom period is that ECW's popularisation of the hardcore style pretty much killed wrestling after initially reinvigorating it. The violence was ramped up to an extreme and then had nowhere to go, and no stories to tell without the application of weapons. WWE had to reinvent itself, and Cena was clearly the guy to do that. He's just been unlucky that none of the other upcoming stars from his era have kept pace with him. One by one they've fallen away. That's no his fault, but it does mean that as he approaches retirement, they don't have the next Cena.

[jimufctna24]

I would not put Cena in the top tier of wrestling Mount Rushmore that I only put Austin, Hogan and Rock in. But he is in the second tier with Taker, Savage and Flair by now.

 

The thing that does me about he fans who really hate Cena is that they act like Cena is driving the business into a great recession that it will never recover. The fans who hate him have always overreacted about him and as the years have gone on it has become more and more pathetic. It is one thing to just not like him, but to act like he is killing wrestling is more than a tad silly. I honestly think if Cena had a 5 star classic with Khali tomorrow they would still pick apart his selling ability or one botched move. They are so set in there ways.

 

Anyway, I do not watch WWE except the big shows these days, but when I do watch Cena remains one of the most over acts on the show, he is one of the few guys who is a real megastar. I have always been drawn to the larger than life characters in wrestling, and Cena is one of them, his act just screams big time.

 

I greatly enjoy Edge and Punk, but I appreciate Cena played a great role in making them bigger stars. Cena is not my favorite wrestler ever, he may not even make my top 10, but I can appreciate him. He has had quite a fantastic career, one of the best.

 

Edit: I forgot to agree with the credit gave to that match with Lashley and to also agree with Pictos on the matches with Orton. I blame Orton for those mainly though for being such a dullard.