Cena Does Not Suck?

Hey Scott,

I left the school in Africa about which I wrote a short essay for your blog last year (concerning the reaction of my junior high students to the Bret Hart-Stone Cold match at 'Mania 13), and now I'm teaching in Pakistan, and once again my students are marks… except this one guy. He reads all the dirt sheet sites and analyzes it all from a smark perspective while still enjoying the hell out of the product.

More importantly, he downloads all the shows for me, so last night I watched Wrestlemania XXVIII; it was the first time I'd watched a 'Mania before reading the results since 'Mania XII!

Until this school year, I had only watched WWE sporadically at best since '96 or so, and I completely missed much of the Super Cena era. I've seen all his Wrestlemania matches except the Miz one, plus various other assorted highlights, and I've seen most episodes of Raw starting with the Summer of Punk.

Here's my point:

I don't care much for Cena's punches.

I hate his shoulder block move. (Ultimate Warrior's had much more impact).

He is frequently more lighthearted than I would like him to be.

Those gripes aside, John Cena is perhaps the most compelling character in recent WWE history, and I would like to gently suggest that everyone who hates him is a fucking moron.

I'm reminded of an old Simpsons episode. (I think it may have been the Lollapalooza episode). The Simpsons were debating the merits of "cool", and basically Marge figured out that there is no way for her to be cool in the eyes of her kids, largely because her kids are idiots. So there you have it: Cena is Marge Simpson, and the fans are Bart and Lisa.

Consider: Cena enjoys his work. He loves to wrestle. He loves wrestling. As he stated recently, he has carried the flag for the industry during a time when it has been very uncool to do so. While we may get sick of him saying it, the fact remains that the character (and presumably the man himself) does not care whether you cheer or boo him. He does not let anyone change him. He does his thing, with no regard for anyone else's opinion.

Compare him to The Rock. Once a detached, too-cool-for-this-crowd anti-hero, The Rock has become a pandering, smiling, repetitive bore. If it wasn't for the fact that wrestling fans cannot help but cheer someone who has been away a long time, the crowds would boo Rock out of the building, and rightly so.

People clamor for a Cena heel turn. I counter that this is like clamoring, in 1987, say, for a Hulk Hogan face turn; why demand a heel turn for a character who already gets greater heel heat as an ostensible face than any heel on the roster?

John Cena's crowd reactions are unique. The closest thing we've ever had to the types of reactions he provokes was Bret's heel-in-the-States, face-everywhere-else run in '97. Why change that? Why reduce him to just another heel when the crowds are always molten for him as-is? The kids love him, the aspiring cynics hate him… it's an awesome dynamic.

Cena also calls Bret's anti-American run to mind because, like Bret, he is completely in the right, and the audience is only booing him because the audience is full of assholes. Again, which is cooler: the guy who has refused to change for years and lets the boos roll off him, or a pandering phony from Hollywood with a cheesy grin?

I also question the consensus that WWE doesn't know how to create sympathetic faces. Sure, that woo-woo-woo guy has been made to look like a bitch, but guess what? He looks like a frat boy douche. So fuck that guy.

The WWE currently boasts arguably its most sympathetic face ever: John Cena. Just 'cause the fans are mouth-breathers who delight in engaging in spastic fits of cartoon cynicism and therefore opt to boo the guy doesn't change the fact that Cena (the character) is a great guy who refuses to back down… and who just lost the most important match of his career… and was then attacked by a sellout cunt of a bully named Brock Lesnar, all to the giddy cheers of the very people he has worked so hard to entertain for a decade.

This is some seriously compelling shit, and the average throwaway Raw match these days has more athleticism than most PPVs had in their entirety back in the '80s (setting aside Hart and Savage, I suppose), and there are nuances and potentially dramatic situations now that one could never have imagined even fifteen years ago, and wrestling fans are the most blindly, stupidly nostalgic asshats in the world, and I am sending this to you as a rambling rant rather than a composed, objective essay because I am so baffled and excited and intrigued by the John Cena character that I'm struggling to view it from anything but a mark perspective.

I desperately want Cena to get his win back from The Rock, and then I want him to beat the ever-loving hell out of that gutless sellout cunt Brock Lesnar, and then I want him to look into the camera afterward and give the "WWE Universe" the biggest shit-eating grin of all time.

But I realize I'm in the minority.

Also? I thought it'd be cool if Rock (who will earn boos if he ever comes around more than once a month on a consistent basis) resurrects his Hollywood heel persona and forms a stable of egomaniacal bitches think they're too good for wrestling: Rock and Brock, with perhaps Batista and Goldberg for back-up.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Cheers,

Monte