The Cenassassination of the WWE Feb 22, 2014

Every Monday night I do this to myself.

I irritate myself by carrying on watching a product that continues to depreciate in quality, week in, week out. And once again, I am writing about it for the sake of catharsis.

Maybe forcing myself to watch shit performers like Santino Marella and Jack Swagger is just a form of self-flagellation, but why do I continue to endure the utter dreck of matches that involve John Cena.

Just this week, I watched a semi-decent match where Antonio Cesaro – a great performer and technical wrestler who deserved a big push long before now – made John Cena look good, but John Cena undeservedly received plaudits for his abilities and performance in the match.

Let’s be clear: Cena doesn’t have any ability and his performances are non-existent. The man is devoid of talent. He is an absolute pariah where pro-wrestling is concerned.

All he is, is a poster boy, a breakfast cereal box figure, a cartoon caricature of what a wrestler in the 21st century should be. He just sucks.

My main problem with the current WWE product is this constant preoccupation the WWE hierarchy has with John Cena, who is arguably the most hated wrestler on the current roster mainly because people are completely bored of him – and for many valid reasons too.

He is the all-rounder who the kids look up to, who the older generation believe is a nice respectable all-American guy and who the ladies love because he has a good physique. The ultimate role model. The consummate professional. And all those other bullshit platitudes they bestow upon him.

The WWE loves him because he apparently shifts merchandise. Truckloads of sweatbands, neon t-shirts, khaki shorts and baseball caps with slogans like “NEVER GIVE UP”(which is ironic because most people wish he fucking would) and “THE CHAMP IS HERE”(even when he isn’t a title holder).

He also promotes various charities, from the Susan G. Komen “Rise Against Cancer” campaign to the anti-bullying campaigns the WWE promotes every year. He also constantly heads up the Tribute To The Troops event. Yes, he is without doubt the “face of the WWE” or “The Guy” who the WWE constantly makes references to in storylines.

But if he’s so great, why does he get boos and jeers at every event he appears at?

It’s simple.

He is a shitty wrestler. His matches are predictable. He can’t sell an opponent’s moves without looking as stiff as a board. He’s destined to kick out of any finisher used upon him, and he is usually booked to win every match he appears in.

His moveset makes Hulk Hogan’s look about as versatile as Dean Malenko’s and his mic skills have about as much charm and wit as Mark Wahlberg’s acting in The Happening.

Not only that, no matter what storyline is happening, no matter how important it is, John Cena is still booked as a main event/headline act regardless of what he is involved in. The omnipresence of this guy in WWE programming is tedious because he offers nothing fresh and new to the card.

A John Cena match usually consists of the standard six false finishes where Cena reverses about three attempts when his opponent tries to hit their finishing move and more often than not, he ends it by hitting the Attitude Adjustment and gets the 1-2-3 count, despite the fact that for at least 75% of the match he gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter.

After WrestleMania 28 we saw Brock Lesnar enter into a programme with John Cena. Lesnar was a legitimate heavyweight champion in the UFC who had defeated the likes of Frank Mir, Randy Couture and Shane Carwin – yet in the WWE Lesnar was booked to lose clean to John Cena… in a no-holds-barred match at Extreme Rules!

The constant stream of headline fights he is given that are bettered by matches lower on the card annoys me too.

WrestleMania 28 saw a main event between Cena and The Rock, a main event which was never considered that notable anyway, and which was repeated again a year later at WrestleMania 29 and both of them were eclipsed by The Undertaker’s annual appearances.

As we have also seen in recent times, he has received props for putting on good matches with CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, but no-one has ever admitted to the fact that Punk and Bryan have carried Cena through the matches and their quality has helped cover up Cena’s botches and lack of sells.

Even The Rock made Cena look good in those WrestleMania matches because Cena has such a stiff, sluggish and asinine character in the ring that no-one believes he deserves the amount of title runs he has had.

We look at the future of the WWE and it there is a wealth of talent who could carry the company for years to come, but as long as John Cena is around, the likes of Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan are never going to be allowed to ascend to the summit of the WWE. No matter what, no matter who is getting a monster push, Cena is always there.

You can tell the audiences want to see more of the likes of Daniel Bryan, and the chants for both him and CM Punk are evident.People want to see something different rather than seeing John Cena shoehorned into the main events all the time.

People are also tired of seeing this guy no selling moves, and not putting emerging talent over.

This year, we saw Damien Sandow carry a Money In The Bank contract for many months and the hope of many was to see Sandow get a decent push as a WWE World Heavyweight Champion. But along came Cena, with a supposedly weakened forearm, who won the title from Alberto Del Rio at Survivor Series and still successfully defend the title against Sandow the following night, despite repeated attacks on the injured limb.

Despite the adversity and the odds stacked against him, and no matter what opponents do to him, Cena always finds enough strength to hit an AA and win the match. It’s unbelievably dumb and it denies other wrestlers who work a lot harder than him a chance to shine.

When will the WWE allow the guys who deserve pushes and the chance to be in the spotlight without this slabheaded saluting dickhead hanging around to ruin it?

In one year alone, we have seen Sandow and Dolph Ziggler take on Cena and disappear into midcard obscurity. Ryback was over with the crowd, despite the fact he isn’t that great a wrestler, but had his momentum killed by a programme with Cena.

Now as we head into WrestleMania, it seems Cena is likely going to be put into a match with Bray Wyatt, who is one of the best mic talents and in-ring performers to have emerged from the NXT, and is a future top-level draw with the WWE.

But he’s probably going to be squashed by Cena.

There was even talk about John Cena being the guy who could end the Taker’s streak next year at WrestleMania 31 in a casket match.

So imagine that match for a minute – Taker performs six tombstones, five Last Ride powerbombs and a couple of Hell’s Gate submission moves but Cena never taps and always kicks out. The match ends with Cena catching The Undertaker as he attempts to go Old School from the top rope, reversing it into an Attitude Adjustment and dumping Taker into a casket. END OF THE STREAK.

Cena then prises the lid of the coffin open. Raises the Taker’s hand and hugs him in typically sycophantic fashion despite the fact he was never ever going to put The Undertaker over and had to be the guy who ended the streak.

You may laugh but that is exactly how it would play out because that’s how bulletproof Cena is in the eyes of the company, even though his character is shit, his mic work is abysmal and he can’t wrestle.

He has been forced down our throats for so long now that the crowds and audiences have become pissed off with seeing this talentless guy being handed all the good spots, all the praise and all the plaudits.

When will this obsession with this asshole subside? When will the WWE allow the guys who deserve pushes the chance to be in the spotlight without this slabheaded saluting dickhead hanging around to ruin it?

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