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Originally Posted by Primetime
Like how the Rock would use the Rock Bottom as a setup for the Peoples Elbow.
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The difference is, The Rock Bottom is a great finisher. It's been widely imitated, and modified somewhat throughout the wrestling world.
The F-U however... just sucks. Well, it sucked until Cena turned it sitout. Otherwise, it's a weak finisher that highlights one of the problems with WWE wrestling as of late, crappy and repetitive finishers. How many people must use the Complete Shot before it comes a standard move ala the DDT (if you're not Raven or Jake The Snake, that move is best used as a setup nowadays)? How many times must we see Death Valley Drivers turned into flaky slams, or be teased into seeing what we think is a piledriver, but looks like a reversal. There is legitimate reason to keep these moves down to a mininum, but coupled with a crippled workrate, these uninteresting finishers as of late is one of the things hurting the WWE in-ring product.
Sometimes the wrestler makes the finisher; could anyone BUT The Rock do The People's Elbow, or Hogan a freaking leg drop? Maybe. But most likely, NO.
Moves of this manner, including Cena's 5 Knuckle Shuffle, definitely depend on who's doing it. Usually, it's someone with a lot of charisma behind them that gets someone into the match (see the aforementioned Kurt Angle and his Olympic/Angle Slam, one of the early points at which Angle was initially panned).
Sometimes the finisher makes the wrestler. "Sugar Shane" Helms was a promising up and coming cruiserweight after coming out of the boy band lampoon 3 Count. But besides his wrestling, what had the wrestling fans buzzing? The Vertabreaker. People would tune in just to see it. Because of that finisher, Shane was allowed more of a spotlight, and we found that he was even more entertaining than just lip syncing a really crappy pop song.
Scott Steiner needed something to match up with his fiery persona outside of the ring. The answer? The Steiner Screwdriver. Perhaps one of the coolest finishers in the business, this, more than his mic work and "freakish" physique, made him IMO.
Even though he might have been saddled with crappy, almost insulting gimmicks for years, you know The Pedigree was one of the main things that got HHH over. How many times have you seen older WWE footage, where HHH got little to no reaction, but when that Pedigree was set up, the pops began?
So looking at Cena, I don't think the 5 Knuckle Shuffle could be his "it" move. It just doesn't have the "humor" factor of The People's Elbow (when you think of it as The Rock being so much of an ass to his opponent, that he'll waste time showing off, instead of a finisher that's supposed to put someone out for good, the effect is much better). Cena's match pacing is VERY much like The Rock's around 2000 or so, with the lack of moves, the serial brawling, and the "joke" technique. However, unlike The Rock and his Rock Bottom, the F-U, in its "dumping"/kneeling form, just doesn't cut it, except when done to someone like The Big Show (I believe that one of the real reasons Brock Lesnar got over, was because he would F5 the likes of Show and Rikishi). What Cena should do is exclusively make the move a sit out, similar to that "Yebisu Drop" found in the GameCube WWE wrestling games, or the "Samoan Driver" in the SmackDown series. It looks more "legit" that way, and definitely much cooler.