John Cena = 1996 Ric Flair

[Hanso Amore]

Hang with me here...

in 1996 Ric Flair was the WCW champion and before losing the title to the Giant on Nitro a young HANSO remembers a STAR flair still filling in on Saturday Night and Worldwide as champ.

I remember on those shows seeing Flair face

HARD WORKING Bobby Walker
Jim Powers
Craig Pittman

And more. The FUCKING WCW CHAMP giving shots to those nobodies. ANd these werent squashes. I thought Bobby Walker was a star when I saw him with flair. He took the champ to the limit.

So, Flair putting over all those chumps as legit threats, was his version of Shelton Benjamin, and now is the Cena open challenge. Cena is making Zayn and now owens look like champs.

[Seth82]

Flair always made the job guys look good.

He had a legendary tv squash match with George South in the 80s that is a must see.

[Theo Dious]

I was recently listening to Sean Waltman's appearance on the Steve Austin show and he brought up about how he would make the office mad by trying to have great matches with enhancement guys, and how he would beat jobbers with his feet on the ropes just to put them over a little more.

Cena is definitely sliding into that Flair-esque role of "now I'm the man and I can use that to get new guys over," though he and Flair are vastly different & it doesn't look exactly the same. I really hope they don't get too paranoid about "protecting" Cena though.

[Hanso Amore]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7G-e6WWhmWU

Case in point. There are dozens of these pro and Saturday night matches on YouTube.

The champ, making walker look great, and even cheating to win.