Will Cena/Rock be bigger than Hogan/Rock?

[NormanSmiley]

the audience was so swelled back during the rock/hogan match, the audience who was loyal to WCW came over to WWF and casual fans jumped all over this match. A year build gives them 11 months to get people who havent paid attention to the product for a long time interested in this match. However if I turned off the WWF in 02 cam back in 11 to see john cena all over my tv i wouldnt stay long

[Damian Rey]

Originally Posted by NormanSmiley the audience was so swelled back during the rock/hogan match, the audience who was loyal to WCW came over to WWF and casual fans jumped all over this match. A year build gives them 11 months to get people who havent paid attention to the product for a long time interested in this match. However if I turned off the WWF in 02 cam back in 11 to see john cena all over my tv i wouldnt stay long

I don't think you can objectively say you wouldn't stay long, because you have no idea how the product would appear to you after a 9 year lay off.

I do agree that having a year to build this could possibly work in their favor. The fact that they can promote the Rock on a Mania card is going to sell tickets on its own.

And like what was said earlier, the Hogan/Rock build wasn't all that great, but rather the match that put it over as the epic encounter that it is. Depending on how they book Cena, this could end up being a hot build and result in a hot match.

[NormanSmiley]

i think you canobjectively say that if you stopped watching in 02 and came back now you would say the product has gone downhill in almost every key area except maybe pyro and production values. and when things are down the leader gets the blame, that leader is cena

[seapig4]

Cena is not Hogan let alone The Rock. Cena maybe the biggest star in WWE for the past 6/7 Years but Hogan was the biggest name in wrestling for nearly 20 years.

[Damian Rey]

Originally Posted by NormanSmiley i think you canobjectively say that if you stopped watching in 02 and came back now you would say the product has gone downhill in almost every key area except maybe pyro and production values. and when things are down the leader gets the blame, that leader is cena

You can't objectively say anything. All you're doing is speculating about how you may or may not feel about the product after a 9 year lay off. Who's to say you wouldn't tune in be drawn in byt the newer guys who have taken the reigns?

Punk, Orton, Cena, Miz, Barrett, Morrison, Sheamus, Mysterio, Batista and a few others were not around in 2002. All of those guys have main evented at some point or another in the past year, with Bats and Cena being the faces of the company from 2005 on.

If anything, WWE is going uphill. If you don't think so, you're either being bias or ignoring facts. They are a publically traded company. That's an upgrade. They have a big money toy deal, move a shit ton of merchandise, sell out stadiums yearly for a PPV that people buy for the name of it alone, and have stars, unlike Rock and Austin, who project to be in the company for many years to come on top of the length of time they've been there already.

WWE is not going downhill. At all.

[Jeritron]

I think the crowd was more rabid back then, and the generational gap between Rock and Hogan felt much larger.
It was more surreal back then because of how much things had changed from Hulkamania to the Attitude Era.
It seemed like something we'd never see, and that gave it that legitimate dream match feel.

Now, things haven't really changed as much. WWE has just refined their production quality, but the eras and the model for what a superstar is aren't nearly as different.
Rock and Cena is exciting, and it's grown to be a huge match for fans, but I don't think it's close to the same thing.

That's a fan perspective though. The atmosphere of the crowd and the generational changes don't change the fact that this match will still do huge business, and possibly even bigger business.
WWE is promoted much differently now, and even if the crowd isn't as directly into this match, it could still do bigger numbers. Either way it's going to mean a lot for this current audience and era, and that's really all that should matter.