John Cena

[iggymcfly 0]

The way I see it, this guy's totally bombing as champion and getting booed by at least a large portion of the crowd on a regular basis, but they still won't let his run end.

 

I personally quit watching Raw on a regular basis after Summerslam, but it seems like whenever I do tune in, Cena's getting booed, and from what I read, the crowd was almost completely against him at Taboo Tuesday.

 

My question is when we look back at Cena's reign a few years from now, will we look at it like Diesel's reign? Both just seem to go on forever while business is slowly getting worse and worse. I think we just might see these two reigns linked as examples of absolute failures for heavily pushed babyface champions.

 

Thoughts?

[Guest fanofcoils]

Cena was champ on the show nobody watched (Smackdown) then he moved to Raw and was in a lower card unoffensive title feud with CHristian and Cena, then it became offensive when he feuded with Jericho, Cena was terrible then. August and September when Cena was feuding with Angle, Cena peaked in worthwhileness, now he is soso as champion but not as offensive as he was when he was feuding with Jericho.

 

Cena is making WWE a lot of money with the merchandise. I don't know how he does in the ratings but I wonder. Cena is a Rock lite with his interviews. They are rarely or never amusing and they are just kind of weird and not very natural. I think Cena will have the title until he drops it to HHH at Wrestlemania and HHH will claim Cena is not in his league or something.

[sluggo 0]

It's not Cena's fault WWE handcuffed his gimmick. Cena was over doing freestyles during his promos and being a cocky SOB. I'm a huge Cena fan so I don't see the hate. I think he and Batista have been champs for over 6 months and neiter one have dropped the belt. The fans that boo Cena were probably fans that were drawn in during the attitude era and use to seeing the title switch hands every 6 weeks.

[hyperchord24 0]

Cena was champ on the show nobody watched (Smackdown) then he moved to Raw and was in a lower card unoffensive title feud with CHristian and Cena, then it became offensive when he feuded with Jericho, Cena was terrible then.  August and September when Cena was feuding with Angle, Cena peaked in worthwhileness, now he is soso as champion but not as offensive as he was when he was feuding with Jericho.

 

Cena is making WWE a lot of money with the merchandise.  I don't know how he does in the ratings but I wonder.  Cena is a Rock lite with his interviews.  They are rarely or never amusing and they are just kind of weird and not very natural.  I think Cena will have the title until he drops it to HHH at Wrestlemania and HHH will claim Cena is not in his league or something.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Probably says that now about him.

 

Cena tries way too hard in his pomos to make them sound like rock's old promos. He fails miserably.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I usually don't come into any of the threads and bash the guy because I conceded that he sells merchandise and brings in a certain fanbase. But I gave up on Raw shortly after he came over as champ, and I lived through the Diesel '95 and Michaels '96 reigns.

 

I just can't buy the guy as a serious wrestler. He actually embarrasses me as a fan. I think in hindsight making him champion will go down as a bad business decision.

[The Tino Standard 0]

They missed the boat on Cena. If you recall, during the 2004 lottery, Cena was super-over to the point that the Raw crowd was chanting for him to be the last draft pick for Raw. If I were Vince McMahon, I'd have called an audible on the spot and gone with it. Sound ridiculous? It's not like they're not already booking on the fly anyway.

 

Instead, they waited a year and did a switch of the champions that nobody was really clamoring for.

 

It would probably serve all parties best to have Cena drop the belt to Angle at Survivor Series. 1. Cena is not over with the fanbase at-large right now, while Angle is. 2. Cena can still sell merchandise as long as he's floating around the top of the card, especially if it's a heel with the title and not another babyface. 3. Cena can rebuild his credibility once he has the burden of being champion taken off him. Right now, he's got a bullseye on him as he gets forced down people's throats.

 

Turning Cena heel might end up getting him more over as a face in the long haul, but I don't think they're willing to do that because of merch sales. Thing is, they really don't need to. I think a lot of the booing would go away if he just didn't have the belt. You're held to a different standard when you're the champion.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

*Horn-Tooting Mode*

 

I totally called this shit back when the Angle/Cena feud first started up. The fact that they added Michaels to the mix makes it even worse.

[The Niggardly King 0]

But doesn't Cena actually draw?

[Black Lushus 0]

hotshotting the belt off of him right now isn't the answer...turning him heel or tweener, at the very least, is...

[The Niggardly King 0]

Tweener is the way to go with Cena. Also cut out the gay jokes and stuff. It got really bad during that one Carlito's Cabana when he said he wanted to stick his dick into Angle's mouth and his nuts in Carlito's.

[Dangerous A 0]

When you are in the bind that WWE is in terms of finding people who draw, no, it wasn't a bad business decision to put Cena on top now. He's drawing. Problem is, his gimmick has a shelf life and he is a terrible worker and that is now starting to come back to bite him in the ass. He is being exposed in there versus Angle and HBK. They did the right thing putting the belt on him for business, however, with interest in his character waning by the week, they need to figure something else out. I think HHH is hitting his head against a wall right now because I think he was figuring at angling himself versus Cena for WM.

[Promoter 0]

This is just tradition. People root for the guy to become the world champion and then turn on him. Now, I'm not saying some of it is not justified by the masses. Actually, it kind of started at the MSG RAW earlier this year and I did see this coming since the JBL feud. The answer is not to take the belt off Cena right now. THAT will really screw him up. It will look like he was a failure as champion. That is where they royally screwed Shawn Michaels in 1996. What happens is that fans expect the wrestler to turn it up a notch as champion as someone noted. When they take the belt off prematurely it only re-inforces the idea the fans had that he wasn't worthy as champion. This is not all Cena's fault. He was really more over on smackdown and when he got sent to RAW it was a good idea, but they messed him up from the get go.

 

Angle/HBK's rematch was being done at Vengence and we know how those guys ripped up their match at Mania. That takes away some of the shine off Cena arriving. Batista and HHH go into a HIAC match and third encounter where people expected HHH to get the belt back. Then you cut the legs off the Christian/Cena series by adding Jericho and they make Cena look like he was the champion of the B show for real.

 

Then they move to SummerSlam and Hulk Hogan returns for his first singles match in about a year and half. They put him in a match against Shawn Michaels of all people and HBK finally gets entertaining in the form of his DX days. That overshadows the title feud with Jericho. Cena is NOT looking like the real WWE Champion in all of this. Then Cena finally starts to get main event shine and he's jobbing out to Angle in non-title matches. How can the masses take Cena as a serious champion with all this going down. Compare this to Batista's treatment on Smackdown when he went to that show defeating the man on RAW HHH 3 times in a row. Then Cena isn't helping with the crappy Rock lite jokes and doesn't actually do the schtick he did to get over in the first place by doing edgy rhymes and letting the audience finish it with a curse word. It's quite easy to see why fans are turning on the guy and not to mention his superman strength that has been given to him. Then top all of that with the Mcmahons returning on RAW and not even bothering with the WWE Champion because they rather go against a "real star" in Steve Austin and you're going to have problems. Bischoff is then fed to bother with Cena. Tell me, how does this look to fans who were behind Cena during the Mania build when he was booked as being anti-establishment and facing the longest reigning champion of the last decade? They need to keep the belt on Cena and put the focus on him. If the fans continue to boo, have him turn on the fans and cut the flowmos that made him get over in the first place. He was once the franchise of smackdown and a cocky bastard. Now he's out there telling gay jokes and kissing babies in the chain gang. This sounds exactly like HBK and the Kliq that did not vibe with the cocky bastard that got over at WM 11 as a friggin heel.

 

They took the title off HBK at MSG for the same reason some are saying here, but as soon as they did that the fans wanted the belt back on Shawn. All it did was damage HBK's reign. HBK also didn't have Hogan, Austin, HHH, etc all being touted as returning back home to overshadow him either. Diesel is kind of the same story. Once they started to give him his edge back as a tweener he became less boring and probably more over. It only made him become a stronger draw that went to wcw. Cena for the most part imo is not the problem, the booking of the champion is. I swear Cena could come up with better material, but they probably tell him to do gay jokes all the time because that's what Eminem did a couple of years ago to get heat. It simply isn't working.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

I see it linked more with Shawn Michaels. Both got over as these rebel characters then got completely watered down as faces right before it was time to start their world title programs. By November, both were being booed quite heavily. Just look at Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series 1996 and how eerily similar it is to John Cena now.

 

Diesel is different in that he never should have been champion in the first place. You'd probably be able to make a better comparison between him and JBL. Even though I like JBL and didn't like Diesel, I'm not so blind as to not have noticed that he had a Diesel-like effect on buyrates and ratings.

 

Quick question: Remember last year at the Royal Rumble when the crowd was cheering for Cena over Batista? If they are in the ring today, does anybody think that the crowd would respond in the same way?

[Da Maintenance Man 0]

When you are in the bind that WWE is in terms of finding people who draw, no, it wasn't a bad business decision to put Cena on top now. He's drawing. Problem is, his gimmick has a shelf life and he is a terrible worker and that is now starting to come back to bite him in the ass. He is being exposed in there versus Angle and HBK.  They did the right thing putting the belt on him for business, however, with interest in his character waning by the week, they need to figure something else out. I think HHH is hitting his head against a wall right now because I think he was figuring at angling himself versus Cena for WM.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Cena is NOT terrible. There's a difference between average & terrible. Tyson Tomko is terrible. Snitsky is terrible. Carlito is terrible. I think we can all agree that Cena is the better worker out of all 3 of those guys.

 

I partially agree that the move to Raw did hurt him. I think this is just WWE fuckin' up yet another main event face run. Once a good, edgy heel comes along, gets some momentum going & they finally turn them face it's like creative doesn't know WHAT to do with them. The same thing happened to Victoria and Randy Orton's face runs.

 

Right now I'm hoping they go through with a nice heel turn. The thing is, since they're on USA now then maybe if Cena went back to his '03 heel character then his raps would be able to return to the edgy nature they were back when he was on Smackdown.

[hyperchord24 0]

Ther WWE has a habit of getting faces over by making them monster heels first, then turning them.

[UseTheSledgehammerUh 0]

Diesel was a much better champion than Cena.

[humongous2002 0]

Cena's only sin is that he is still too green to be a main eventer, it takes a lot of years of experience in the ring for a wrestler to become a main eventer or a top level guy (Just look at Austin and even HHH) and sometimes a wrestler never gets the chance to be a headliner just because he might not have the right look or the charisma to get over with the fans. Also Cena's thug wannabe character is perfect for a heel not for the top babyface on Raw, WWE managent are so out of touch with their fans that they were expecting us to cheer for a gangsta wannabe from the suburbs just because he carries a spinning belt and makes gay jokes.

[CBright7831 0]

Cena was entertaining back when he was a heel. Those promos against Brock, Taker, Eddie, and Angle were excellent.

[Dangerous A 0]

Cena is NOT terrible. There's a difference between average & terrible. Tyson Tomko is terrible. Snitsky is terrible. Carlito is terrible. I think we can all agree that Cena is the better worker out of all 3 of those guys.

 

 

This is like comparing liquid shit from solid shit. In the end, it's all still shit.

 

Cena isn't as bad as the people you mentioned, but he still isn't even average. I mean, Trish Stratus does better worked punches than Cena for God's sake. Cena is over enough to be in the ME, however his in ring is not main event level IMO.

[UZI Suicide 0]

I don't think he's really been a *bad* champion. His lack of popularity is being overexaggerated here on the forum, it's not like he's getting booed out of the arena every week. I don't know the attendance figures/ratings/buyrates under his reign compare to the ones before he became champion, but I know he sells a ton of merchandise.

[cabbageboy 0]

No, they need to get the title off Cena at Survivor Series. It outta be apparent by this point that he desperately needs to drop the title and probably turn heel soon after.

 

The Diesel comparison isn't a good one really because I think Nash could have actually drawn money if he was used as a monster heel rather than a watered down face with no personality. I mean he was put in positions that made no sense, such as him being the face vs. the heel Shawn at WM 11. You have a guy 7 ft. tall and 300 lbs. that's the FACE going against a heel that is all of 220 lbs.

 

Note that after WM they didn't repeat this again and had Diesel dick around with Sid and Mabel, then a heel turned British Bulldog (who had zero heat as a heel at that point). Nash's big problem was that he simply wasn't all that over when they put the title on him, not as a face anyway (Bret, Shawn, UT, hell even Bulldog and Luger were more popular). He did a bizarre face turn at Survivor Series 94 and then just won the title immediately with no build. It was like...HUH?? Thing is I don't recall there ever being a major backlash against Diesel in 1995 since he mostly didn't wrestle anyone decent that the fans would have preferred. Nobody wanted to see Sid or Mabel, etc. win the title. So yeah that strategy worked in terms of the fans not turning on Nash, but it also didn't draw a dime.

 

Cena is actually a lot, lot worse. This guy did have a major build to the title and is in theory supposed to be ultra popular. I'm not really that shocked that fans are turning on him. People thought I was nuts a few months ago when I made the offhand statement "If Cena wrestled RVD that Van Dam would get more of the crowd." Anyone think that sounds insane now?

 

I knew Cena was in big trouble as champ at SS when the crowd seemed to be more for Jericho than him. This is a totally heatless, jobbed out Jericho we're talking about here...a guy who hadn't even done anything to get a title shot.

 

Cena dropping the title has to happen pretty soon though. He's not worth having it for a whole year. If HHH is saying stuff like "He isn't in my league" maybe, just maybe HHH is right this time.

[Promoter 0]

Ther WWE has a habit of getting faces over by making them monster heels first, then turning them.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thankfully, The Rock and Steve Austin avoided this. I wonder if it had to do with Vince Russo just leaving the damn characters alone. It also had to do with both guys knowing how to handle turning face and having mass appeal which comes with seasoning. I won't get into how I think Rock stole some of Austin's style to keep his heel edge as a face, but I did worry about Austin when the wwe started making him say "hell yeah" to the crowd. If you see Austin of 1996-97 you will see interviews where he didn't want the crowd cheering for him and he still got over when he was dissing them. The wwe is afraid of letting Cena do this. The Rock did the same thing with sing a long with the champ.

 

It seems Vince and Steph always have to "tinker" with the guys rising to the top to make sure they had their hand in making him a money player. HHH couldn't even avoid it in 2002. He started to do those lame ass poses for face pops that looked stupid. It's also true it takes years for someone to become a real main eventer. They have rushed Batista and Cena and not given proper time to Benoit and Eddie as main eventers. The proof with Eddie is there. Now, they are wondering if to turn him back heel or not because he's back to the same babyface heat he had when they were pushing him to the title. I think most of the times, when fans choose someone to rally behind they would usually stick with the person, but the booking starts to change with that person and turns fans on the person.

[Promoter 0]

Cena is NOT terrible. There's a difference between average & terrible. Tyson Tomko is terrible. Snitsky is terrible. Carlito is terrible. I think we can all agree that Cena is the better worker out of all 3 of those guys.

 

 

This is like comparing liquid shit from solid shit. In the end, it's all still shit.

 

Cena isn't as bad as the people you mentioned, but he still isn't even average. I mean, Trish Stratus does better worked punches than Cena for God's sake. Cena is over enough to be in the ME, however his in ring is not main event level IMO.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Actually, I'm going to have to agree with this. My more markish friends even notice how terrible he does his punching. Honestly, his in ring work needs well...work. The funny thing is that rumour around Mania that had Cena working with Steamboat to improve and it seems that was a complete lie or Cena doesn't learn too well or quick.

[Enigma 0]

They missed the boat on Cena. If you recall, during the 2004 lottery, Cena was super-over to the point that the Raw crowd was chanting for him to be the last draft pick for Raw. If I were Vince McMahon, I'd have called an audible on the spot and gone with it. Sound ridiculous? It's not like they're not already booking on the fly anyway.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The problem with that call is that Cena was the U.S. Champion at the time. The belt hadn't even been active for a year, and it would have damaged it terribly if the lineage got broken so quickly, although some would argue that Big Show winning the title in October 2003 and not making his first title defense until February 2004 against Billy Gunn did enough damage.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Am I the only one that thinks the Cena heel turn is going to be him joining with Vince & the McMahon faction? It won't help him in the slightest.

[Black Lushus 0]

Am I the only one that thinks the Cena heel turn is going to be him joining with Vince & the McMahon faction?  It won't help him in the slightest.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It'll be a double switch with Angle...Cena will go heel and join Bischoff, Angle will go face...the WWE will be stupid and make him the goofy Angle rather than keep him badass INTENSE~! Angle...Raw's WM ME will be HHH/Angle...

[Guest Leelee]

I'm surprised Cena's uber-popular face run has lasted this long...

 

As much as everyone here hates the guy, he's got great charisma. I just hope he can make his heel character work great again.

 

The problem, however, is that it's impossible to be the top dog as a heel in WWE-land...

[Promoter 0]

So, how does Triple H do it?

[Black Lushus 0]

I'm surprised Cena's uber-popular face run has lasted this long...

 

As much as everyone here hates the guy, he's got great charisma.  I just hope he can make his heel character work great again.

 

The problem, however, is that it's impossible to be the top dog as a heel in WWE-land...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

oh he would only be the top dog heel long enough to job to goofy babyface Angle...after that Cena will toil in the midcard or possibly a fued with babyface HBK...

[Guest Leelee]

So, how does Triple H do it?  

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You entirely missed my point.