Hustle, Loyalty, Disrespect
John Cena the human being seems like a cool guy.
I have no inside knowledge of this, as I’ve never met John Cena and, barring extremely improbable circumstances, never will. I’m basing my opinion off of his collective body of work. Interviews, charity work, and interactions with his fans have all led me to believe that John Cena is a pretty remarkable human being. And I’m not alone. He has over 5 million fans on Facebook, almost half a million twitter followers, and he is the face of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Yet despite a positive attitude, impressive physique, and exceptional charisma, he struggles to win the approval of the fans he adores so much. In two weeks, he’ll participate in the 27th annual Wrestlemania emanating from Atlanta Georgia. It will be his 7th straight year in the main even, and his 6th straight year of either getting a mixed reaction, or being booed out of the building outright.
My question is why. Why do men hate John Cena so much? Theories are presented constantly, from his refusal to return to a widely popular rapping gimmick, to being involved in a storyline that kept popular performer Chris Jericho out of the WWE for two years. He isn’t funny, he isn’t serious, he isn’t this, he isn’t that. There is a lot of talk of what John Cena isn’t, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is what John Cena is.
John Cena is wrestling like a heel.
Come get some…sympathy
Ever wonder why the good guys never go for the appendages? Or why the bad guy never limps to the ring, bandaged 20 ways to Sunday, hoping to gut it through his match? Why is it that every bad guy injury ends up working to his advantage, like Cowboy Bob Orton using a cast on his arm to knock out opponents during mid 80’s?
These things don’t happen because the fans want to see the bad guys beat up, they don’t want to see the bad guys in pain.
We buy our tickets to see the good guys give the bad guys what they deserve, but if you watch him limp around on a bad knee for long enough, or favor that arm that was slammed into the steel steps, you can’t help but sympathize with him on some level. Bad guys don’t get hurt because they’re not supposed to get your sympathy. They get beat up, embarrassed, humiliated, and sent running with their tail between their legs. The sympathy is reserved for the good guys. The good guys are supposed to be in constant peril, hanging on for dear life against the relentless assault of their cheating/lying/coward opponent. The good guy is supposed to dig deep and, with the deck stacked against him and preferably with a broken arm or two, vanquish the despicable villain after a glorious and crowd inspired comeback.
But it’s hard to make a comeback if you haven’t been anywhere. This isn’t a knock on the fact that Cena’s wins all the time. Hulk Hogan, for all intents and purposes, lost one match between 1984-1990 and remained just as popular as ever. He did this through his connection with the crowd who truly believed that THIS bad guy was the one who was going to stop Hulkamania. The Hulkster had done it before, but this guy was too big, too strong, too much to overcome, and when he did the crowd ate it up. This formula worked for so long because Hogan made it work. Hogan made it look like every time he stepped in the ring he was being beaten to death.
With Cena, that belief is absent. And with the absence of the perception of physical danger, or serious injury, then what is the point of cheering for him to make a comeback? John Cena is making it difficult to focus on the pageantry and spectacle of his matches because more times than not, he cannot perform the very important task of suspending the disbelief of his audience.
You can’t see me…selling.
At SummerSlam 2010, one of the WWE’s most important pay per views of the year, John Cena led a dream team of wrestlers into the main event to take on an invading group of upstarts known as The Nexus. It was arguably the most anticipated SummerSlam main event in 5 years.
The match was back and forth, with both sides having the advantage. The end of the match saw Cena alone against two Nexus members, leader Wade Barrett and Justin Gabriel. Two on one domination ensued with the exclamation point being Barrett performing a DDT, a maneuver where you are dropped on the top of your head, to Cena on the concrete floor.
For reference sake, the only other time of note I can remember a DDT being delivered on the concrete floor was between Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts and Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat in 1986. Steamboat was knocked out, received a concussion, and was out of action for months. So when the same thing happened to Cena, two thoughts immediately crossed my mind. 1) Nexus is winning this match and 2) I remember what happened to Steamboat, I hope John Cena is ok.
Sympathy.
So Cena, presumably unconscious and probably concussed, is rolled into the ring. Justin Gabriel attempts a move from the top rope but Cena moves at the last second and pins him. Within 30 seconds, Cena has Wade Barrett submitting in the middle of the ring to seal the victory.
Regardless of who decided the move should be included, the message delivered by the last minutes of SummerSlam was crystal clear. A recently unconscious and concussed John Cena, standing in the middle of the ring smiling his million watt smile, didn't look like he had just survived a 30 minute war for his life. He looked as if he had just finished an intense workout where at no point his skull was smacked against a concrete floor.
Sympathy gone.
Five star knuckle shuffle
No disrespect to the incredible matches that he had with Shawn Michaels later in the year, but John Cena’s Last Man Standing match at the 2007 Royal Rumble against the Samoan Bulldozer Umaga is the best match of his career.
A week before Cena had been squashed, literally, when Umaga jumped off the top rope and sent both men crashing through a table. Cena was said to have a bruised spleen, and came to the ring with his abdomen heavily taped. What followed over the next 23 minutes was Cena trying to survive an ass-beating while every move in his arsenal was compromised because of his injury. Cena found a way to win that match, and it felt miraculous. It felt like we had survived a war with John Cena, and we were all different because of it. You could see it on his face. He was happy to make it out alive.
I thought it was a turning point in his career. Then, a couple months later during Wrestlemania 23, after Shawn Michaels had been working his arm for a good portion of the match, Cena made a comeback with his appendage miraculously healed. Reports afterward were that Michaels, regarded as the greatest of all time, was very disappointed post match. He wasn’t the only one.
Attitude adjustment
Thanks to my strikingly small frame, limited athletic ability, and strong aversion to repeatedly inflicting pain on myself, I’ll never be a WWE Superstar. And thanks to…well writing this, I’ll probably never get any kind of office job with World Wrestling Entertainment. This isn't angry ranting for attentions sake, but a genuine effort to help explain why one of the most valuable commodities in WWE history is not being used up to his potential.
To his credit, Cena takes all the booing in stride, knowing that any reaction is better than silence. The problem is that this reaction stems from something that exists at the core of John Cena the person. A man who makes you believe with his jokes and care free attitude that he is personally above fighting but still capable of kicking ass. John Cena is a man you bring to break up a fight, not a man you go to war with.
Still, isn’t that enough? Aren’t we supposed to prepare ourselves for conflict, but only engage if absolutely necessary? He is someone that I would encourage my children to root for, because he lives his life prepared physically for a fight that he only resorts to as a last option. I feel there is room for that side of Cena to come out, instead of coming across looking and sounding like a goofy aloof pacifist.
The conviction of his words is evident, but the direction is off target. John Cena deserves his stadium sized Wrestlemania pop. The problem is, as the last 6 years have shown us, he may never get it.
