John Cena

[WeeAl]

14 minutes ago, air_raid said:

The Batista one was in the build up to SummerSlam 2008 when they thought doing the odd-couple tag champions thing to add intrigue to that story was more important than Cody and Ted getting chance to establish themselves as good tag champs, having only won the belts five weeks later. It lasted a week.

The Miz one was in the build up to Mania 27 when they thought doing the odd-couple tag champions thing to add intrigue to that story was more important than Slater and Gabriel getting chance to establish themselves as good tag champs, having only won the belts the night before. It lasted a few minutes.

Yeah, they sure treated the tag belts like shit for 15 years or so, didn't they?

So then, all four of Cena's tag team title wins were based on the odd couple pairing? Even more reason to break the tradition and go with your plan of Big John mentoring some young fella to a long tag title reign/program. Cena and sidekick Vs Orton and lackey. We're bound to be ready for another installment. "This time Pal, Cena Vs Orton but with a twist! Haha, I love it!" Smackdown needs it for their debut on FOX in a year's time. . .

 

[air_raid]

1 minute ago, WeeAl said:

Cena and sidekick Vs Orton and lackey.

Woaaaahhhh. Settle down.

[HarmonicGenerator]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Or instead of Joe, maybe that one last big program with one of today's top stars could be against Daniel Bryan? I know they've wrestled before but I bet we'd all enjoy it again.

Or maybe mentor to a noob and going on a quest for the tag belts? They haven't done that enough.

Did they start something like that with Cena and Evan Bourne once, or was that a one-off on an episode of Raw?

[WeeAl]

16 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Woaaaahhhh. Settle down.

You know it makes sense. 

[King Pitcos]

6 hours ago, dopper said:

Almost every time somebody brings up the 2008 Rumble, the word “neckbeard” soon follows.

The people in this topic who have explained the reasons they don’t like Cena have resisted insulting the people who like him.

But the ones who do like him usually feel the need to point out what losers and idiots the people who don’t like him are.

I know. It seems redundant, considering the people who don't like him are usually so good at outing themselves as losers and idiots.

[UK Kat Von D]

10 hours ago, King Pitcos said:

I know. It seems redundant, considering the people who don't like him are usually so good at outing themselves as losers and idiots.

What an interesting level of self awareness.

[Wrasslin]

I mean culturally speaking we’re all Losers. Given we’re spending our prescious time on this planet discussing a fake sport on the internet. 

[Accident Prone]

Could be worse. We could be discussing anime.

[BomberPat]

Cena is superb. Even when I can admit fault with his ring work (he's very much typical of the "WWE Style" that increasingly doesn't interest me), he's consistently putting on brilliant matches within that style - whether superb modern era matches with the likes of AJ Styles, or an absolute clinic of how to construct a wrestling match designed to teach the audience how wrestling works, like he had with Triple H in Saudi Arabia, he can do everything that's asked of him, and do it well.

He's also about as selfless a top guy as they've ever had - can you imagine Austin or Hogan having agreed to get squashed by Undertaker or Lesnar in a high profile PPV match? Or to learn Mandarin for the sole purpose of selling the WWE brand in China?

His promos are (generally) brilliant, and I agree that he wiped the floor with The Rock throughout their feud, though one criticism I've seen raised in this thread that I agree with is that, in spite of that, his promos often don't quite feel human. He's got better at this as his character's evolved into a more meta place of him being "John Cena, Main Event Veteran" and less of a gimmick, but he had a tendency to flit between voices and accents depending on the content of the promo and the location of the show, and as a result you never really felt you were hearing the real man speak. So, even at his best, he was never capable of a Dusty Rhodes "Hard Times", or even a CM Punk "Pipebomb", because you never believed in him nearly enough for him to create that connection.

My unpopular "hot take", though, is that I was never a fan of The Rock as a babyface promo anyway. I could talk about it for hours, but his promos rarely ever showed him as feeling threatened by his opponent, or lent any significance to the match.
In the build-up to the Armageddon Hell In A Cell, while Vince was putting it over as the most dangerous match ever, Kurt Angle was panicking that he was up against the worst odds he'd ever faced, Mick Foley was putting his job and reputation on the line, Steve Austin was trying to murder Rikishi, and The Undertaker was hitting his career best promo line with, "I may not dress like Satan any more, but I'm still down with the Devil", what was The Rock doing? Bullying interviewers, doing goofy impressions of Rikishi, and talking about how "The Undertaker wants to lick Kane's big red nipple".
His "who in the blue hell are you?" line to Booker T, and his promo burying the WCW Title (a belt he was about to win!) by saying it had been held by everyone including the dog from Frasier, did as much damage to WCW's credibility in the Invasion storyline as anything Undertaker did to DDP.

 

As for what happens to John Cena next, he's in a really interesting, almost unparalleled position. No one has been on top for as long as he has, working as consistently as he has; the closest frame of reference is the tail end of Sammartino's career, and that doesn't even come close. He's found a role that's never really existed before of being a genuine WWE Ambassador - not in the sense that retired wrestlers showing up at press conferences are deemed "ambassadors", but in the sense that he's a top guy being relied upon to sell the brand overseas, to work key matches on shows like the Greatest Royal Rumble...there's not really a precedent for that, and it's an interesting microcosm of where WWE is at right now.

 

As for, creatively, what's left for him - presumably he'll fall into the Triple H/Undertaker role of having big nostalgia matches for the next few years, though I expect we'll get one more title reign out of him before he's done. It feels like the one thing genuinely left for him is a heel run, which I think he can only pull off once he's been genuinely replaced by a new top face, and Reigns simply isn't there yet. I think it would be fun to see them rehash the Two Man Power Trip angle with Cena and Orton, though I doubt we'll ever see it.

[Carbomb]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

His "who in the blue hell are you?" line to Booker T, and his promo burying the WCW Title (a belt he was about to win!) by saying it had been held by everyone including the dog from Frasier, did as much damage to WCW's credibility in the Invasion storyline as anything Undertaker did to DDP.

I don't completely agree with this bit. Yes, he did say that about Booker T and DDP, and that was a bad move, but he did also big up the title by saying he would proud to hold the belt held by Frank Gotch, Ricky Steamboat and - WHOOO - Ric Flair (which got a round of "whoos" and applause).

[Devon Malcolm]

One of Cena's finest achievements was carrying Sabu to a decent match at some PPV during that weird phase where they had him feuding with ECW guys.

[Keith Houchen]

When you think about it, JBL actually IS poopy.

[Accident Prone]

31 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

One of Cena's finest achievements was carrying Sabu to a decent match at some PPV during that weird phase where they had him feuding with ECW guys.

Justin Credible also holds this honor, making it the most tenuous link in wrestling.

[Factotum]

That mini Sabu feud was actually pretty well done. Think it was only 2-3 weeks and, as you say, they ended up having a fairly good match on the PPV.

How utterly weird that they ever wrestled.

I think my one issue with Cena was he  ended up feeling stale at times. More character progression would have been nice. When he got battered by Lesnar that time and Heyman was challenging him to dig into something in order to challenge Brock, I did kind of want to see a different version of his character. That Umaga match showed how they could have gone. But then he was back making stupid jokes. When he does his serious stuff he is really good.

As someone mentioned, he was just never for me. But I have really enjoyed a lot of his matches. Plus CM PUNK V Cena is the last time a match felt absolutely huge for the title.

[BomberPat]

Yeah, I think Cena's weirdly in a similar position to where The Undertaker's been for years, in that they occasionally hint that he's getting older, that he's not the man he once was...but then it terms of how he's presented, and how he wrestles, they do nothing to actually tell that story. We're not seeing him actually adapt into that role, and it's because they still need him to be Superhero John Cena when he actually does rock up.