John Cena: Another Appreciation

Never give up, even if you have an elbow the size of Pluto's moon
Photo Credit: WWE.com

John Cena stood in front of the Anaheim crowd with Andy Garcia's vestigial, malformed twin bulging out of his elbow, pouring his heart out on his own behalf as well as for the man who defeated him at SummerSlam. For as many times as he broke out the preacher voice or tried to crack jokes like he was still on the schoolyard, whenever he spouts real talk, and Monday his talk was the realest it had been in awhile, it almost always resonates with authenticity, impact, passion, all of which should befit the man who has held, for better or worse, the mantel of WWE Franchise for longer than anyone in the WrestleMania era.

For his candor and soul, as he announced he would miss the next four-to-six months, the crowd cheered raucously. Anaheim's reaction, if I could dangerously make the correlation between real sport and the full-impact Vaudeville that is professional wrestling, was akin to the sarcastic standing ovation that Michael Irvin got as he was carted off the Veterans Stadium turf after being leveled by professional football hitman Tim Hauck. The only difference is Cena would have gotten that reaction anywhere in the English-speaking wrestling fan world. Far be it from me to say that all wrestling fans occupy that nadir of Philadelphia fandom 24/7, mainly because when a guy stands out in front of the crowd to announce something, whatever he says could very well be part of the story, unless we're talking about the rare case of a guy getting to retire live on the air.

The truth of the matter is that those fans are going to miss John Cena. Obviously, the man going off television and live events for the next half-a-year might be what they wanted, and who knows, maybe the Daniel Bryan Experiment will succeed so wildly that WWE will let those vocal fans spear their white whale through the eye and have Cena turn heel. In honesty, I have been far too annoyed with some of Cena's worst shtick, but I know WWE programming won't be the same without him in the coming months. For better or worse, Cena has been the canvas upon which WWE has operated for the last ten years, and most recently, that canvas has been able to provide the company opportunity to build something special.

Forget the fact that CM Punk dropping his first pipe bomb wouldn't have worked against any other WWE superstar, not even Triple H. Forget that any time in the last two years that those two got into the ring, the results have been borderline match of the year candidate-quality. Forget even that Cena did more to legitimize Bryan in one truncated month of build that was interrupted by the McMahon Family Hydra (credit, Bill Bicknell) laying essential groundwork for the coming months than anyone outside of maybe Dr. Shelby or Justin Roberts in his entire tenure. Cena's monolithic presence, a shadow that at times caused frustration from those people who wanted him gone (myself included sometimes), allowed WWE to open up the main event for experimentation.

I think sometimes, fans can get too caught up in absolute card positioning. Punk's lack of pay-per-view main events was a HUGE talking point in his original heel turn, but while Cena was tangled up slaying monsters, whether they be as banal as The Big Show, absurd as John Laurinaitis, or as monumentally gargantuan as his dual slate against the Rock, Punk was able to chew scenery and engage new opponents for the WWE Championship. Did Bryan and Punk's summer of '12 feud for the WWE Championship need to go on last to be entertaining or for the matches to be important or phenomenal? I fully believe if you think the answer is "yes," then maybe your priorities on watching wrestling are a bit out of place. Then again, whether or not you enjoyed the matches because of card placement is not my point here. What I'm trying to relay here is that because Cena was off fighting kaiju or being injured, WWE was allowed to try different guys in sub-main event roles, an important breeding ground for future rocks of the company.

If you enjoyed SummerSlam's two biggest matches, you can thank the multinational corporation that is Cena at this point. I don't think there's any chance in hell that Punk vs. Brock Lesnar is a viable match if not for Cena first being an adversary against Punk and then getting the heck out of Punk's way when he needed to. Bryan's rise to the top is almost self-explanatory, but again, I don't think the nature of Bryan's victory is getting enough play. You people (YOU PEOPLE) all realize that the only other man to defeat John Cena, clean as a whistle, in the middle of that very ring, since WrestleMania XXVI, has been The Rock. That's it. So many complaints go up that Cena doesn't lose, and yet, some of the same people have the nerve to be dismissive of a victory when it happens? I have no factual basis to put this hunch on, but my guess is John Cena could have had the match finish changed at SummerSlam so that he'd have his foot on the ropes, or that Randy Orton would cash in before Bryan beat him, or some other bullshit.

But the match went down the way it did, presumably without Undertaker needing to threaten Cena with bodily harm. I think that fact speaks volumes.

Still, I get into this bad habit of using the Royal We to make all y'all share my appreciation for wrestlers who may or may not be popular. Honestly, haters gon' hate, especially ones who are the most vocal at arenas, the ones who shout "CENA SUCKS!" in response to the "Let's go Cena!" chants that precede. I don't know whether I'm ever going to change minds in regard to Cena, but I don't think Daniel Bryan exists without Cena right now. CM Punk certainly doesn't, not in the form that he's in now. WWE's going to miss Cena for the next six months, even if it won't appear that way with Bryan storming the main event like a dynamo. I know I'm going to miss Cena, even if I won't miss the preacher voice.