John Cena

Right this is not another Cena must turn heel or a Cena bashing thread. I am actually going to give Cena a bit of praise in this thread.

First of all, I have never and will never be Cena's biggest fan nor do I despise him. When I watched the occasional PPV on video tape, I quite liked the man, the most noticeable PPV i remember of him was Mania 20 when he won the US Championship. Admittedly as I watched more regularly wrestlers moved ahead of him in my preference eg JBL, HBK, Edge, Jericho, HHH, Kurt Angle ( yes I used to dislike these wrestlers in favour of Cena) I am not sure if it was my age increasing that I began to prefer JBL etc to Cena or like I said earlier the more I watched the WWE product.

Praise For Cena:

I am not a fan of his superman trait, like many on this board but lets get it straight. He is the modern day Hulk Hogan and as such is the poster boy of the WWE and due to the type of audience WWE is aiming at in order for Cena to Remain a hero to kids it is difficult not to have him lose dirty.

Now if Cena is booked to win a match on Raw for example against the likes of The Miz. The opponent is likely to get an 80% share of offence in before Cena's 20% overcomes this. I have heard a lot of hate for Cena in this respect, what I don't get is what the viewer would rather see? Would they rather a complete squash by Cena rather than an opponent gaining some advantage?

Cena is often labelled as the hardest worker on the roster, which I dont quite believe but you can plainly see the guy loves this business and for me I don't see him doing a Rock and leaving for Hollywood so you cannot fault the guys dedication.

Another thing is his poor wrestling ability, people claim he can't wrestle, this is absolute nonsense look at him in OVW for proof, also he has been involved in his fair share of good matches over his career eg Orton @ Summerslam 2007, Orton Bragging Rights, Batista at Wrestlemania 26, Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania 23, Shawn Michaels on Raw, Edge at unforgiven 2006, RVD at One Night Stand 2006, JBL at Great American Bash, HHH at Wrestlemania 22, Kurt Angle on his debut, Undertaker Vengeance 2003 amongst others.

Cena is all for pushing new talent, I read recently he was high on the likes of Kaval, Danielson, Swagger and Bourne. These guys would help freshen the main event scene and with Swagger winning the world title earlier this year, it may be in part to Cena.

Over the past 3 months or so, he has also improved on the microphone, I thought last week on Raw when he confronted Nexus was amongst the best work he has done since he stopped the Vanilla Ice routine.

The major thing for me is the way he is booed at events. It's not exactly his fault the way creative have booked him, I understand he will have some input but it's creative that have burdened him with the gimmick and the moveset so I would view them as responsible for Cena's unpopularity with the IWC.

Like it or not as Cena is around the 30 year old age bracket and is the future of the WWE.

Looking back I will probably get slated for this but I thought I would get it off my chest.

I agree with a lot of this except for:

JacMan wrote:

Cena is often labelled as the hardest worker on the roster, which I dont quite believe but you can plainly see the guy loves this business and for me I don't see him doing a Rock and leaving for Hollywood so you cannot fault the guys dedication.

have you seen any of his films? He won't go Hollywood because he is a shit actor.
Anyway

I don't mind Cena that much. He works hard, he promotes and sells merchandise pretty well. His mic work can be good.
I don't like his moveset, I don't like how bad he is at selling moves. He'll just jump up and run as though nothing had happened, I don't like his shit punches and i hate his gimmick

Hardcore Waffles wrote:

I agree with a lot of this except for:

JacMan wrote:

Cena is often labelled as the hardest worker on the roster, which I dont quite believe but you can plainly see the guy loves this business and for me I don't see him doing a Rock and leaving for Hollywood so you cannot fault the guys dedication.

have you seen any of his films? He won't go Hollywood because he is a shit actor.
Anyway

I don't mind Cena that much. He works hard, he promotes and sells merchandise pretty well. His mic work can be good.
I don't like his moveset, I don't like how bad he is at selling moves. He'll just jump up and run as though nothing had happened, I don't like his shit punches and i hate his gimmick

I can safely say I have never and will never watch any of his films. Thanks for the heads up on the acting front. I imagined he wouldn't be graet, I have actually never watched any of the WWE films.

His films suck, and imo, he sucks, and he can bite the big one next to Randy Orton, who really is the future of WWE.

I quite like Cena tbh. I get the impression he is always wanting to help others. The only thing I gont like is his new purple t-shirt. What happened to the green one?

JacMan wrote:

I am not a fan of his superman trait, like many on this board but lets get it straight. He is the modern day Hulk Hogan and as such is the poster boy of the WWE and due to the type of audience WWE is aiming at in order for Cena to Remain a hero to kids it is difficult not to have him lose dirty.

Now if Cena is booked to win a match on Raw for example against the likes of The Miz. The opponent is likely to get an 80% share of offence in before Cena's 20% overcomes this. I have heard a lot of hate for Cena in this respect, what I don't get is what the viewer would rather see? Would they rather a complete squash by Cena rather than an opponent gaining some advantage?

It's not the 80s anymore, most people found the Hogan superman-like comebacks extremely boring by the early 90s and I don't see why people should accept it when used by somebody else, it makes for extremely boring and predictable matches.

JacMan wrote:

Cena is often labelled as the hardest worker on the roster, which I dont quite believe but you can plainly see the guy loves this business and for me I don't see him doing a Rock and leaving for Hollywood so you cannot fault the guys dedication.

For all his hard work, there hasn't been much in the way of significant improvement on his part. Lets say Titus Bramble is the hardest working player in the premiership for example, it doesn't mean that he's suddenly good, he's still pretty shit.

JacMan wrote:

Another thing is his poor wrestling ability, people claim he can't wrestle, this is absolute nonsense look at him in OVW for proof, also he has been involved in his fair share of good matches over his career eg Orton @ Summerslam 2007, Orton Bragging Rights, Batista at Wrestlemania 26, Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania 23, Shawn Michaels on Raw, Edge at unforgiven 2006, RVD at One Night Stand 2006, JBL at Great American Bash, HHH at Wrestlemania 22, Kurt Angle on his debut, Undertaker Vengeance 2003 amongst others.

Well most of them I wouldn't call good matches (can't believe you threw a JBL match in there), but he has had a handful of good matches I will admit. However, Batista has had some great matches with the likes of Taker and Triple H, but that doesn't make him a good wrestler now does it? Same goes for Cena, he is a below average wrestler, and until he can put on good matches on a consistent basis, then that will always be the case.

JacMan wrote:

Cena is all for pushing new talent, I read recently he was high on the likes of Kaval, Danielson, Swagger and Bourne. These guys would help freshen the main event scene and with Swagger winning the world title earlier this year, it may be in part to Cena.

Ok, so he's a decent guy, but that doesn't mean that we should all of a sudden like Cena as a wrestler.

JacMan wrote:

Over the past 3 months or so, he has also improved on the microphone, I thought last week on Raw when he confronted Nexus was amongst the best work he has done since he stopped the Vanilla Ice routine.

That may be true, kinda difficult to tell when he puts me to sleep because he's giving the exact same promo every week. It was a little different last Monday, but I actually found the promo to be cringeworthy.

JacMan wrote:

The major thing for me is the way he is booed at events. It's not exactly his fault the way creative have booked him, I understand he will have some input but it's creative that have burdened him with the gimmick and the moveset so I would view them as responsible for Cena's unpopularity with the IWC.

For me, it's not so much the moveset itself that is the problem, but the way he executes those moves. The moves don't look believable when he does them and that really hurts his chances of being accepted by many people I feel.

I genuinely don't mind Cena. I can tolerate his merchandise, his cringeworthy promos, the 5 Moves of Doom. For me, he has 3 major problems that stop everyone accepting him.

His punches. Look fake, are fake, and it's utterly impossible to overlook them. He looks like he's a kid doing an impression of a windmill. He needs to stop using, or learn to do them properly.

The STFU. He cannot execute the hold convincingly, he clearly never applies any pressure, and most of the time the guy receiving the hold has to adjust his position to actually sell the hold. You'd have thought by this time, someone like Finlay would have taught him how to do the hold properly. Either this or Cena is virtually incompetant.

Finally... the overselling. The amount of times Cena lies motionless in the ring... it's just awful. And then suddenly he bounces back to his feet, like nothing's ever happened. Selling is such a crucial part of wrestling, and yet something that if someone can't do it, it sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I have never minded Cena, I like his promos, I think he cares a lot, and I actually think he can put on good matches, not just with good workers, Bobby Lashley for example was terrible but Cena had a brilliant match with him.

He obviously has some problems, I don't mind the superman booking, I actually think a lot of the time it puts the other guy over because they get most of the offence, what I would like to see is that it doesn't happen everytime, but for the most part I don't mind it.

I'll probably get slated for this, but I would rather watch a John Cena promo than a Randy Orton promo.

Gunns summed him up in one word IMO, cringeworthy, his shouty unfunny promos, his offence, his selling, the lot are unbelievable and very cringeworthy. He just doesn't have the ability to make anyone over 12yo believe in his matches, and if he can't make you believe even just a little then why would, or even should people like him??

I do believe they way he is booked is the major part of why people dislike him though, and again like Gunns said this is not the 80s and we don't wanna see that shit anymore.

Cena seems like a good guy, yer maybe he does but well quite frankly you can be the nicest guy of all time, doesnt mean your any good at what your doing or that I have to like you.

I respect Cena the man but as the wrestler he is god awful. His selling is atrocious as he lies down like hes been shot and then all of a sudden jumps up to do that shit five knuckle shuffle like nothing is wrong. SELL THE MOVES THAT HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO YOU PLEASE!!!!!

His promos are just cringeworthy too. Need I remind people of JBL is poopy? He does this big intense face and he just starts screaming for no reason and quite frankly it just pisses me off and I have to turn over. I havn't watched RAW in about 4 months.

Randy Orton should get his push and once Danielson gets a few wins under his belt he should get pushed up the card more, although his character doesn't need the superman push.