Is there a small chance that Cena has done more harm than good?
 

I will start off knowing I will get flack for a thread like this, but keep in mind it is just for a discussion. After his US run, the internet's opinion of John Cena went through the roof, and everyone knows how hard he works and that he has been the face of a company for a decade. He is solid at most aspects of the business and charismatic.

That argument has to be counterbalanced though and as well as being the face of a company in creative decline for a decade, he was forcibly pushed through fan backlash for many, many years to become firmly cemented as THE man. He had years of mind numbing a and boring feuds and matches. He wasn't chosen by fans like a Stone Cold, or even a Daniel Bryan. He was placed on top by sheer force of will. The fact that he was hardworking and talented has meant he has stayed there. But I certainly wouldn't hold him in as high a regard as guys like Hogan and Stone Cold. They were a different level in terms of popularity.

The reason, however, that I ask about the small chance of him hindering the business is his constant connections over the years to keeping others down.

Today I read a story that he decided that Baron Corbin was "not ready" for his push and that is why he isn't getting one. We heard the same about guys like Alex Riley and Ryback in the past, among others. There was the infamous story Jericho told about his literal burial of the Nexus and Wade Barrett (under chairs), then telling him and edge afterwards, "yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that". So ok, Alex Riley wasn't going to jumpstart a new era, but having a handful of established stars could have helped. A glass ceiling can be very subtle. It's easy to blame the talent for not getting over...but constant pushes and depushes will do that.

He has had a history of being on top for a decade now, and in that time, he has supposedly halted many a push and defeated many a wrestler. Rusev has bags of talent and never recovered from their feud...one more of many. Rusev has a presence, is great in the ring, can talk and is equally adept at comedy. He should be a main guy right now, but he is an afterthought potentially on the verge of release.

The fact that Cena ISN'T a Hogan or an Austin and doesn't do dambuster business, despite his obvious qualities, makes me believe that there could be an argument that he has done more damage than good to the business over his era.

We are kind to him today because he is no longer in our faces at every moment, but I just wonder how history will see John Cena, when the warts and all books start to reveal the man behind the persona.

No, Cena hasn't done a lot of damage. The booking and writing has handled that part.

At this point in time, it's all moot. Cena could put a guy over clean ten pay-per-views in a row, and he'd still be the top guy. The business has changed from Hogan's (and even Austin's) era, where beating someone doesn't establish them or give them any kind of rub.

Working with a guy like Cena could give someone some main-event status, but if that can't be followed-up with consistent booking then it's meaningless. That's why Daniel Bryan was able to progress past Summerslam 2013 to become a huge star, while guys like Wyatt and Rusev struggled post-Cena. They clearly had long-term plans for Bryan, and a victory over Cena was a part of that development.

This. Even with the couple cases of him playing a role in the booking of someone, its still Creative who failed miserably with booking people after feuding with Cena.

Same for Creative letting Cena constantly brush off his opponents or trash their gimmicks in promos and rarely letting them respond back with a stinger or something savage in return.

Listen...song as old as time here...to have winners you must have losers...

No.

Yep.

And also, fans chose Cena. He was monster over. He was champion for quite a while before the fans started getting a bad smell under their noses.

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That is all

Like, if John Cena thought Alex Riley would not cut it then so be it. I am 100% certain Hogan, Rock, HHH, Stone Cold, and every other legit maim evente4 has said, 'Naw, this guy does not have it to be legit' at some point.

A ton of Cena feuds were monsters being built up specifically for Cena to take down like Khali and Umaga. Umaga stayed afloat for awhile because he was entertaining but that was just extra gravy. There whole reason for being there was to lose to Cena though.

Also, thank fucking god he put a halt on fucking Corbin. That guy blows. ALL PRAISE JOHN CENA.

And people like corbin and russev hit an apex and they fed them to cena for fun and profit. Old school booking that will always work, build a monster up feed them to your top baby and shift them out of town. Course theyre a monopoly and there arent other towns but its still good business. Nothing new about it and its hardly a cena exclusive structure. Hogan and lawler benifited from it greatly.

I think if guys like Galloway and Cody have shown us anything, it's that there are different places to go and make some scratch and tighten your craft.

but it's the cream that really rises in those places IMO

Cena has been great for the industry in a public perspective and isn't much different from the Hogan era or the Samartino era in my opinion, be it I wasn't alive for either. It's the time in between those eras where you have multiple stars emerging in the main event. After Hogan you got HBK, Bret Hart, Austin, HHH, The Rock and the Undertaker who ate all just as big of draws as Hogan would be today, if not more due to current events. Cena is on his way out no doubt and has no problem putting the right guy over as we've seen with guys like AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, and Bray Wyatt although WWE put Cena over in the end and if Cena says Corbin isn't ready I trust him.

Amen!!!

Everyone's saying no now, but just wait until he gives Reigns the rub.

Reigns is great. Same as Cena in that he's just booked horrifically

I would not say Reigns is great. His promos and facial reactions are still only decent. He has superstar potential though no doubt.

Cena is a fuckton more talented than Reigns.

Way more star quality, too.

Reigns has the look. That's about all he has going for him.

If they had given him a bit more time to develop in ring and to work on his charisma/promo before shoving him down our throats he could have been so much more.

Incorrect. He won the title at WrestleMania 21 and was getting boo'd out of the building by SummerSlam 2005. So, as the true top babyface for the past 12 years, he's been a true babyface for 4-5 months.

Cena was not great by many metrics. Television ratings, PPV buys, etc. For a top babyface, he really didn't move the needle much, or however you want to express it. But they've invested so much into him now, and now he is actually great enough, that when they don't have him they are in much worse shape. It was a very co-dependent relationship that Cena is starting to outgrow.

I think the biggest credit to Cena is how the company sort of restructured around him. They shifted into a PG era, and have expanded to dip their hands into all these other different pots. If it pays off for them, Cena is likely going to be remembered as the guy that held the fort during those growing pains.

But I don't think you can argue against Cena being bad for immediate business when he was initially pushed.

Wrestling was on a decline in general. Wrestling peaked and has been on the decline since. You can't put that on Cena.

Biggest problem with Cena as a mega star was WWE failing miserably to take his base and mold it into the future base for the WWE. Kids love Cena but after a few years they leave en masse because they get bored of his booking and nothing else being as interesting because of WWE's neglect. His era being really long and Vince being very stubborn on building up future mega stars till recently is another reason for the lack of a future base.

Only reason it hasn't been catastrophic for the WWE is because they always had a constantly supply of kid fans to replace those that left during Cena's era.

Sorry Ruien and Figgy, Noid just has a deeper understanding than either of you. Time to get on his level.

:(

Correct.

Yup.

The move to PG wasn't all Cena...it was Benoit, plus Linda running for U.S. Senate as well.

Yeah, but wrestling was on a decline until Steve Austin got hot too. You just can't really argue against things not going great according to those metrics under Cena. He never spiked anything like that. For a guy in that position, he's been the least sensational. I'm not saying "Cena sucks" or anything like that. I'm not saying that he's the only factor either. I just don't know how you can look at Cena's run and say "Oh, that did everything ideal." It didn't. And that's not the end of the world, it's just what it is.

They weren't anchors on WWE programming though. Cena has been the top star of the PG era -- there's no real debate about that.

I agree with this, by and large. I'm not sure how much the WWE has truly replenished its ranks though. Most of the people watching have probably been watching since the Attitude era, to be honest.

The PG move wasn't WWE restructuring around him though. They restructured him to fit what they wanted to be. WWE's failures over the past decade are because of the direction they've gone in as a company. The fact that Cena happens to be the top guy in the "We bought out our competition and no longer feel the need to try" era is unfortunate but there's nothing he could have done about it. If you just look at him as a talent, he's a fucking megastar in any era.

Nah, not his fault. Cena helped if anything.

Though I've no problem with John's involvement in causes like Make-A-Wish, I also think that WWE shouldn'tve tried to cash in on that. They should've left it alone, and not used it to artifically attract the female and '13-and-under' fanbase.

That group should've latched onto John naturally, and created more of a slower build for his popularity, so it'd not end up feeling forced.

In terms of the ringwork end of things, John, at the end of matches, should've been doing something like sucking wind more after match wins...make it look like more of a struggle than it was. Him coming out of those matches like nothing happened was a gross error in judgment by those who booked him, and to me, made John look weak in victory. Like I said, him sucking wind a lot more would've forged him stronger in the creative sense....think of the phrase 'he smells like smoke cause he's been through fire', like what JBL has said on commentary from time to time.

Maybe having John revisit the babyface elements of the 'Doctor Of Thuganomics' character could take the heat off him for a while...at least 18 months.

Just some ideas. =P

You're right that they didn't restructure and he was just the guy, but a lot of other guys couldn't do it, and none of them did. Cena was just that stable table. I meant that more of a positive than a negative. I mean, I don't like them going PG, but Cena navigated those waters about as well as anybody could have.

When it comes to the ratings and such, I do think those are larger problems with the WWE, but regardless, I don't think you can attribute hypothetical success in that category to Cena. Would he have been hotter if he were allowed to be edgy and grow into his own at a more steady rate? I absolutely think so, but it just didn't happen, so we won't know.

My argument isn't so much against John Cena in terms of him as an actual talent, as it is just how effective he was in that role of top guy. I certainly wouldn't give the WWE's hands a wash on the subject.

They replenished it mainly from female viewers due to Total Divas and NXT making women's wrestling meaningful in the WWE. Problem is they are very violate for weekly support but WWE needs them for big weekly increases to happen. Its a big reason why Bayley was hyped up as the female Cena since she had mega star potential to make them into a very reliable weekly group for the WWE

Forgot where I read and saw the chart but with Cena's demo of kids, they start to become almost non-existent in the teen years and start quitting being wrestling fans in general.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Has Bayley been successful in that role so far?

Some good discussion here and good points, but posting a video of some Cena fans who bought into his whole message, doesn't win me over that he was a big enough star to carry a whole era.

It also has nothing to do with him as a backstage personality or presence in the company. He might do an awful lot of PR good, but has he ever made another guy? What star has he pushed to the next level?

He isn't a big enough star just to eat guys at the top of the card like Hogan did. Hogan can get off with saying a lot of guys aren't ready, but even he eventually ended up hurting the business.

My question is, Cena's star never shone as bright as a Hogan or Austin. If he has backstage pull, has he done damage?

My response, your an idiot. Everyone posted a ton of information you are glossing over.

Not really mainly due to how terrible the WWE has booked/handled her since the call-up. She does have a weakness with promos which NXT was able to deal with successfully and Creative has failed miserably.

Overall?

Bayley just isn't that good

I tend to gloss over posts by someone whose initial response was "No"

Just because I didn't see anything that convinced me otherwise doesn't mean I am an idiot. Board is getting to the stage where it's impossible to have a different opinion or debate. Get risked being called "an idiot" by some aggressive twat ;)

Only joking of course!

But seriously, your second post compared him to Hogan, Austin etc... And my whole argument is based on the fact that he isn't on that level and the company has suffered for it.

Same reason why feeding a bunch of guys to someone who isn't a megastar and doesn't pull massive numbers, might not be a great idea.

Hogan doing politics and a Cena doing politics are very different things. He shouldn't have the same pull as a Hogan or an Austin, is my point.

Other posts have been good and made some good points worth considering in the discussion. I just think that even with the good that he does, even in an era of bad booking, he could still be harming the product potentially.

Only potentially, but think it was worth discussing and it's on a second page, so it obviously has been.

When calling someone an idiot, you should probably spell "you're" right. Just a heads up.

Haha

Oh snap!

I think the question "What stars has John Cena helped make in the past 12 years" is a very interesting question. Who has he "made"?

He "helped" Edge, CM Punk, and Daniel Bryan...... dunno if I would go so far as to say he "made" them.

Aj Styles? Prob Styles' best feud by far and he's put him over multiple times

All Cena can really do is put on great matches and agree to put guys over. And he's done that way more than he probably should. Past that, it's up to WWE to not drop the ball.

Accurate^^^

Yes, extremely.

Yeah, she's been booked so poorly, what with getting to successfully defend the RAW Women's Championship @ WrestleMania 33. Stop with this.

Good God...

#ABTWasRight

:rofl:

This is true, but I don't know if the argument being forward is "John Cena is entirely to blame" or whether or not it's "the effect of John Cena's push" is to blame. We're down to semantics on that front, but I don't think you'd disagree that the Cenazoic Period is less fruitful than others headed by a "mega-star."

I mean, that itself seems like too obvious a point to make, but I do find it interesting that his current greatness (and the WWE, frankly, needing him), kind of retroactively paints over the years and years and years that it really wasn't working the way things like that are supposed to work.

These boards are often not the place for logic and reason. You get that everywhere, but some other places just have more members, so by sheer shock and awe you can find better conversation just based on the odds. But posters like Destor, #1-wwf-fan, Gertner and BigCrippyZ are wonderful.

But then there are times where you just have to go the "you're an idiot" route.

Like when DAMN iNATOR uses an "lol so dumb" sarcastic tone while trying to argue that Bayley's face run has been "extremely successful" and well booked.

I think Dave Meltzer said it best when he said Bayley is more gullible than Surfer Sting.

About what? Nothing ever?

ONLY things I'd have done differently are have her retain in her hometown v. Alexa and write her babyface promos that still allow her charisma to shine through without all the repetitive "I'm just so happy to be here, yay! Unicorns and sunshine and rainbows!" lines.

Why would you do anything differently? Her run has been extremely successful, right?

Why mess with something that's going so amazingly well? You might fuck it up and she'd start getting booed or something.

Aren't almost all her promos along the lines of that stuff?

She won the title so obviously its been super successful. She has had the belt what more do you want

Cena has lost more than any franchise player the WWE has ever had. Bruno never lost. Backlund went from 1977 until his loss to Diesel in 95 without losing a single MATCH at MSG. Think about that. Hogan is Hogan. Nothing to add. Stone Cold wasn't putting people over left and right. The Rock did his share of losing but not to Cena's level. Cena is just a wrestler. He can't control his opponents mic skills, in ring skills, charisma, and what direction the writing staff goes. He works hard and more often than not has amazing matches. Everything else is out of his hands.

Agreed with big stinky Gertner. To blame Cena is ludicrous. IMO part of the success of the Hogan era was not only did u have Hulk on top but u had every territory's main event in your mid card in meaningful angles. Now nobody is a star.

The Austin and Rock era benefited from being insanely competitive and having to outdo the comp. Even with a midcard with crap workers, the main event scene was hotter than almost ever.

Then there was some flipflopping til Cena took the reigns and fans have already seen that kind of franchise vanilla babyface, and they haveny done enougj creatively with anything from mid card to main event to make people give a shit.

Bob Backlund lost one match from 1977 to 1984. Bruno would get pinned in tag matches while Champ, but Backlund didn't even do that.

1 loss and it wasn't even a pinfall or submission (His manager Arnold Skaaland threw in the towel against Iron Shiek in December of 1983)

Bayley is just terrible on the mic. She doesn't connect with her fans.

Lol remember how much they played this up going in ss 94 and wm 11?

I wasn't really watching a lot of wrestling from like 94-95. Just the major ppv's. I've watched a lot of stuff from that era since then, but completely out of order.

All those guys outside of Rock and Cena barely jobbed and what do you know... they were all massively over as babyfaces for years. Cena jobbed left and right and the crowd turned on him. Rock jobbed left and right... and the crowd turned on him. It's almost as if you can be the most charismatic guy of all time but if you're booked as a loser, the crowd doesn't get behind you. HMMMMMM.

Those are great posts by Gertner and Dale, and I think the focus really is on the booking. Whilst going further back, it is hard to compare today's product to the 80's where it was easier to protect top guys and have them safely defend titles against lesser opposition in front of different audiences with no internet coverage.

I think we can all agree that the era, the quantity of matches, the internet coverage and the sub-par booking are all massive contributers, more so than one guy and his limited input. However older guys benefitted, it still stands to reason that they were all more popular than John Cena in terms of numbers of people who came to see them consistently. Although I admit it is hard to measure, especially when it is hard to guage who people are paying to see exactly, like Dale said.

There is still room, however, for him to have done his own damage and made significant contributions to keeping certain people down. It might not have mattered much because of the inept nature of the booking anyhow.

But for my money, he hasn't really successfully elevated anyone through a series of matches (just look at what Jericho did for Owens when he was back. The best performers get it done no matter what) and there are too many rumours and stories about his pull backstage to completely write off the possibility that he has damaged or halted quite a few guys progress.

Not the main contributer by a long shot, I agree, not even close. But all good and top rate No.1 guy, he has never been.

Do you genuinely believe that people turned on Cena because he jobbed a few times? Or Rock for that matter?

Yeah the jobbing has little to do with it. Just uninteresting booking

The jobbing has a shitload to do with it. lol

Do you think they turned on The Rock because he was awful?

When a guy cuts promos where he's talking shit and acting like a badass and then loses constantly, his character comes off like an unlikable, phony dipshit.

If Bruno, Backlund, Hogan or Austin were getting beaten constantly they wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal. Not even close.

Throw Goldberg on that list, too. He didn't even really have anything else going for him. He became a huge star pretty much EXCLUSIVELY because he came off as a bad ass and backed it up by not jobbing on a monthly basis.

Look at Ryback's original face run as a microcosm of it all. He murders everyone he faces, starts a program with Punk and the crowd goes NUTS as soon as he gets his hands on him. He gets massively over... and they start having him job a lot and it all goes away.

Turned on rocky cuz the face act was getting a tiuch stale and they knew he was leaving to do movies

His face act was the exact same as his heel act. He was just... The Rock. Talking shit.

Problem is when he's a face and he talks shit and then fails to back it up he looks like a dumbass.

To be fair a bit, Cena has also wrestled a lot more matches at least on tv per year than most of those past franchise players. Think his yearly win percentage and yearly clean loss tally is still up there with those past greats.

In terms of comparisons with Hogan, Cena usually wrestled more on TV in a year than Hogan did over the course of several years.

Do agree about the stuff regarding him having little to no control over how Creative handles his losses afterwards. For example, Nakamura beating Cena for the #1 contender spot on Smackdown should have been treated as a rub by Cena to Nakamura's eventual title win at SummerSlam. Instead Nakamura lost to Jinder in the usual fashion and decreased the value of Cena's loss earlier.

I hated that they made Cena look invulnerable after taking a beating for so long. His awful matches with Randy Orton were the worst that way. It's not as if Cena didn't know how to sell, he did/does and is actually pretty good at it.

I just wanted to see him sell match-injuries after the match.

For sure. I think that hurt him w fans.

Remember when they made a smark Chicago crowd go from hating Cena to going crazy for him when he came back to beat Lesnar at Extreme Rules? It was amazing.

Then they followed it up by having him lose to John Laurinaitis the next month...

Well he doesnt lose to lesnar then he loses to laurenatis that just insults peoples intelligence

Did Cena job left and right? I seem to remember him being frustratingly well protected. I'd probably make more of a case for protecting him now, because wins and losses do matter (and for those saying booking is a large part of the problem -- that is a large part of booking), if the timing of his elevation was right. He felt really jammed in there at the time, and I remember being off the Cena train well before he was originally given the title and had as long a reign as JBL.

Also the fact that hes having a match with laurenatis is also bad booking in itself

Laurinaitis showing up at Money in the Bank 2011 was fine. There should have been no more after that.

He's always lost way more than any other face of the company. It started slowly around the time he went to Raw but then eventually he was losing more PPV matches than he was winning which is just unheard of for a top face.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the SOLE reason. His booking has been shitty outside of that. But having him job so much is absolutely the biggest fuck up.

Reigns jobs a lot for a top face, too. They made some mistakes early with him that fucked up his character but then it's like they tried to get people on his side by making him take a lot of "harmless" losses and it's just a retarded strategy. Your top face looking weak half the time and then winning a "big one" here and there doesn't endear people to him.

Basically, it's the 50/50 bullshit. The effects are just more noticable with the guys who are being shoved down people's throats as the major stars even though they lose about as much as they win.

I think the problem was them trying to have Babyface Cena against Heel Angle, right after the "Booing the Retard" Feud Angle just had. The fans refused to boo Angle, even after he did everything short of setting a bag of puppies on fire and stomping it out to get heat.

Then, from there, it was the Cena-only show. No one got to successfully be a decent star on their own. Anyone who comes close got their legs chopped out from under them, be it by Cena's ego, shit booking, or a combination.

Seriously, They didn't make Big Bossman look like an idiot during Hulkamania. They didn't make Savage look stupid (well, apart from those two Royal Rumble flubs he did). Foley wasn't made to be a complete buffoon while Austin was on top (he had goofy moments, but wasn't made to look like he couldn't beat his meat).

I agree that 50/50 booking is a problem, but Cena was protected better than most. Between when he won the WWE Title in 2005 and when he went out with the injury in late 2007, his PPV record was 25-6, with two of those losses being DQ, one of them being the Edge cash-in, the other the RVD cash-in at ONS 2, another being Edge (Cena would definitively win the feud) and the other being a multi-man match. At WrestleMania, Cena would be 4-0 and would make both Triple H and Shawn Michaels tap at WrestleMania.

I'm not saying booking has always been perfect, but Cena was pushed pretty hard. I don't think a harder push would have helped him.

Once he got drafted to Raw he started losing pretty consistently on television. Was he protected better than most? For that first couple years at least, yeah. But your top guy SHOULD be winning more than most. That's what justifies him being a top guy. He was still being made to look vulnerable by taking losses every month on Raw to build to PPV. That works for an underdog character (though underdog characters generally don't have a long shelf-life as a top face). It doesn't work for a guy like Cena or Rock or Reigns.

I`d hardly say he ruined it. He helped, he was on top during a slump. It`d be like saying Bret Hart harmed WWE because he was on top during the steroid scandal.

Oh yes definitley. Different era completely. You'd have to start realistically in the mid 90's to compare eras to Cena, although I'd have to do some more in depth research to compare Austin, Rock and Cena. Bruno lost once in a blue moon as did Hogan. Backlund never did, but they were mostly in a era where the Champ hardly wrestled on T.V. Those three never did House Show pinfall losses either

You're not wrong on that philosophy, but the Super Cena push was part of the reason that a lot of people rejected him, and a large part of why ratings went down. It's hard to imagine this retrospectively, but I just don't think he was the guy when he was pushed as such. It didn't really work. He had the right attitude, and he's certainly developed into the wrestler and occasional money promo now -- but he for a long period of time he was ineffective in the role. If he were effective in it, I think we'd have prospered under Cena a lot more than we have.

But that's not Cena's fault. There are very few guys who can turn it on and be at that level. After consistently being pushed for about 8 years, I think Cena started to get it. Plus, there was that cathartic release with Brock Lesnar kicking his ass. I think that took out of a lot of the frustrations people had.