WWE Superstar John Cena has been put into a weird role as of late. The 15-time World Champion has been put into a role to help put over younger talent. This does not seem to be something Cena is against, in fact, most of the time he called who he worked with. However, WWE and Cena may be going through major issues that will need to be ironed out very soon.

According to Daily Wrestling News, WWE wants to transition Cena into a similar role to Bruno Sammartino when he was still active and the company had him lose the World Title. WWE was behind Bob Backlund and wanted to push him while Bruno still was around in a major role outside the title picture. The idea of the “old man veteran” status WWE is using with Cena is mainly to help with the Sammartino usage.

The flip side of this is that WWE wants Cena to remain looking strong. Currently, they are in a passive aggressive battle over this. WWE knows that they need Cena to remain a top guy due to the massive draw he has become, so they don’t want to put him into a role that would diminish this. They instead want Cena to come off as a strong force but one that will not be in the title hunt as often. This is a good concept, as it allows WWE to focus on younger talent. The issue is that the company cannot work currently without a draw like Cena around consistently.

Which comes to the next bit of issues between Cena and WWE.

John Cena apparently has a production deal with Leftfield Pictures. They are heavily involved with the reality television world. Cena is said to have been involved in putting together WGN’s Wrestling with Death reality show. On top of this, he is working with Leftfield on other projects.

WWE apparently caught wind of this in a meeting with various networks, which was an issue. WWE never gave Cena permission to speak with outside companies on future opportunities or even current, especially if they would interfere with his current work. Cena is already drawing massive interest from Hollywood, so WWE sees this as a dig at them.

Leftfield wants Cena to have his own reality show, one that that would be done without WWE’s involvement or financial participation. It is well known that Cena’s relationship with Nikki Bella has been a part of WWE reality Show Total Divas, and a big reason for its success. Leftfield believes they could have a successful reality show with or without WWE. This would be a big deal, as it would push WWE aside potentially as Cena moved into other opportunities. Leftfield is hoping to use that as leverage to allow Cena to do a reality show and slow down his WWE career in the process of also taking on major roles he is offered.

The big problem with this is that Vince McMahon does not want WWE Superstars or Divas getting reality shows without WWE involvement, especially the face of the company in John Cena. Many believe that if anyone has the kind of leverage to pull this sort of thing off, it’s John Cena. What can WWE do to him really? Fire him?

What helps WWE is that Cena is under contract and they can block things like a reality show from taking place, so this show is by no means guaranteed to happen even if Cena is wanting to do it.

What is interesting is that those close to Cena believe if WWE stands in the way of him pursuing interests such as this, he’d leave the WWE and not work with them even part time while he pursues the opportunities coming his way. Many believe that if Cena was outside of his WWE contract, he’d be offered a lot more roles because movies studios wouldn’t have to worry about him getting hurt in the ring and they’d know he was free to work as long as they needed him to. This is the main thing that held The Rock up when he was getting roles offered to him.

What is even more surprising is that many had no idea why WWE wanted to take Cena’s character into the place they have. However, many were unaware that Cena was pursuing a reality show outside of the WWE and even more do not know that WWE found out about it. Now it’s assumed that WWE is pushing Cena’s character in this direction as a way to write him out if needed or simply to have him take a lesser role so that if he does leave he won’t be the center of attention at that time.

[IMG Credits: WWE.com, Fansided, DeviantArt]