Why I Love John Cena

[JGlass]

I haven't really been into wrestling the past couple of years, but every now and then I get a pining to see a great match. Thanks to our forum's own Uncle Sam to leaving his WWE Network account logged into on my PS4 when he visited this previous Rumble, I was able to satisfy that pining tonight. I asked some guys from the forum for the best AJ Styles match since he came to WWE, and I was tipped off to Royal Rumble 2017 where he defended his title against John Cena.

You already know this is a great match before the guys even make contact. Each guy takes ample time to hype up the crowd, Cena doing his All American routine, AJ Styles doing his Phenomenal routine, and the crowd is RED hot before anyone even makes the first move. What follows is probably one of the best matches in either man's career, Cena puts on the performance of a lifetime doing his bigger guy shtick, and AJ Styles pulls out moves you've never seen before, and will probably never see again.

I feel like the further removed from wrestling I get, I become better able to see the machinations of the art at work, and my takeaway from this particular match was that wrestling basically boils down to two guys doing an act. Some acts are more exciting than other acts, and some actors are more skilled than other actors. Sometimes great actors get stuck doing bad acts, sometimes bad actors luck into great acts. In the case of this match, we get two great actors doing two great acts, and the result is a 5 star match.

This match prompted me to ask NorCal of the Wrestling Wars Podcast if it was a knock on John Cena's legacy that he could never get the fans to love him.

NorCal explained no, in fact it's a testament to John Cena's legacy that he's been able to stay on the top all these years despite the fact that WWE has booked him into a corner that the live audiences hate.

I don't think anybody that watches wrestling with any objectivity will deny that Cena is an insanely gifted wrestler. Already blessed with an extremely athletic body, he's able to put on a great show of strength, agility, versatility, and quite obviously has a knack for the theatrical in a similar way to HBK or Ric Flair. The problem with John Cena is that he's been doing the same thing for maybe 15 years now. Sure his repertoire has grown more nuanced over the years, but he has the same general look, character, move-set, and story since he first took off all those years ago.

I think it's also quite obvious that the people that go to wrestling shows are different now than they were even 10 years ago. They're certainly different from the ones that went 20 years ago. It's now young men in their 20s and 30s, even guys in their 40s and 50s that have never stopped loving wrestling. They've been watching for most of their lives, and they intend to keep it that way. These guys have been seeing John Cena do the same shit for what seems like an eternity, and they're sick of having him trotted out to do his tired act for the ten thousandth time. These guys get more hyped for your Seth Rollins and AJ Styles, guys with a seemingly endless bag of tricks and creativity with flamboyant characters that tell it like it is.

Right now, the act that is over with the live audiences are these guys that were former indy darlings. For whatever reason, the live crowd is hot on the underdogs, the guys that aren't your typical muscle bound wrestler. Hairy and burly Rusev gets bigger pops than Roman Reigns despite the fact that Rusev hasn't been pushed half as hard as Roman. And if you want to talk about hot, how on fire was Bray Wyatt when he first started this gimmick in the WWE?

I think John Cena is perfectly capable of pulling off an act that would satisfy the live audience. I think if WWE let him deviate from the act he's been doing the past 15 years of his life, he could give the fans exactly what they want. His resume speaks for itself: he puts on fantastic matches, he's clever on the mic, and he's a notoriously good guy outside of the ring. But WWE needs him to do his tired, All American act because he live audience is only a fraction of where the WWE draws its revenue from. More than the live audience, they need the millions of people at home that will probably never go to more than one or two WWE live events to tune in and watch wrestling so the toys keep selling, the clothes keep selling, and the advertisers keep paying big money to associate themselves with WWE. John Cena is the perfect guy to play that role for the WWE: a handsome adonis that loves America and hard work. CM Punk couldn't be that guy for them, Subway wants John Cena, not CM Punk. Daniel Bryan couldn't do that for them, Toys R Us wants John Cena, not Daniel Bryan. Brock Lesnar can't do that for them, dying Make a Wish Kids want John Cena, not a literal monster of a human that will probably consume them for strength. John Cena's success is his greatest curse: he's the poster boy for the WWE at a time when anti-establishment sentiment is as hot as ever, but WWE needs him to be that poster boy so they can keep the lights on.

I have a great deal of respect for Cena because of that, and I think that's why he's one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. He might not be the flashiest wrestler, but he still manages to wow you every time he wrestles a big match. He still connects with fans despite the fact that he's been doing the same thing for 15 years, and he has managed to keep fans from every type of demographic tuning in for longer than anyone else ever has. His career is truly without parallel, and his devotion to a career where he's gratuitously booed night in and night out speaks to what a persevering individual he is.

[Uncle Sam]

Thanks to our forum's own Uncle Sam to leaving his WWE Network account logged into on my PS4 when he visited this previous Rumble, I was able to satisfy that pining tonight.

If I'd known you were going to the account for such lurid purposes, I'd not only have logged out of my account but thrown your PlayStation out of the window.

The irony of the last four (ish?) years of John Cena is that the wrestling fandom as a whole has warmed to him (i.e. they hate him less than Roman Reigns) at a time when the standard of his work has dropped. You're right when you point out that wrestling is pavlovian and the best wrestlers aren't the ones who do different things every night but the ones who do the same things every night well - e.g. Daniel Bryan wasn't the best wrestler in the world because he knew ten thousand submissions but because he had the best house of fire routine in the business. That said, Cena has taken this to absurd new levels over the last few years: whereas you look at his classics with CM Punk or Shawn Michaels or Rob Van Dam and you see a collection of very different matches with very different dynamics, if you took an equal sample of his matches in the last four years, you'd find essentially the same match over and over and over. His AJ Styles feud in particular seemed to be the same match again and again with just the ending changed each time. That, combined with the ROH-ification of his matches (his finisher is now so ineffective that it is literally its own set-up), makes me think we might just be seeing the most profound artistic statement of our times.

[DNA 2.0]

That's why Cena is an all time great. Nobody else in the business has has both longevity and plenty of great matches.

CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Brock Lesnar, Rock, Styles, Owens, HBK, Batista, Edge. Cena tore down the houses in his matches against these guys. Who else can say that he has wrestled in so many classics? And he always gives back to the business.