The devastating tide of opinion that sweeps through the IWC on sometimes an hourly basis can often lead to a stone cold fact that is neither true or even considered. More often than not its a case of several impressionable individuals being sucked into a quirky, funny, fact dodging piece of pop column that sways their opinion to a flat dead end.
A fine example of such a phenomenon relates to the idea that the WWE Champion is somehow an awful wrestler. At this time you will perhaps suffer a severe case of déjà vu. I’ll be the first to admit that this subject has been almost debated to death. However after Wrestlemania 23 the smarky sentence of ’John Cena can’t work a match’ is now up for serious debate. Now first of all this hardly seems like a subject worthy of passionate and hardcore debate, but lets face it, this is professional wrestling. This is a business built around two grown adults jumping into a poor man’s boxing ring and pretending to fight, so please don’t deny yourself your say.
Since John Cena ditched his edgy heel rap gimmick the support from wrestling’s core demographic has dwindled into nothing but a piped in whisper, drowned out by female squeals. His gimmick went from edgy, funny and dare I say it ’cool’, to America’s good guy of Hip Hop. Not an image that the Hip Hop genre endears to. This in turn lead to Cena’s movie debut as The Marine. In what can only be described as ‘explosion mania’ The Marine mutated from on screen persona to in ring gimmick. It wasn’t long before The Champ began saluting as he entered the stage. Something that wrestling fans (on both sides of the Atlantic) find sickingly unattractive in a baby face. As Cena’s character went through this subtle yet drastic transformation he held the US Title and eventually the coveted WWE Championship. He switched over to the ’A’ brand (argue all you like Smackdown fans, it’s the flagship) and ultimately became the WWE’s main player.
The previous paragraph may paint my picture to be somewhat Cena sceptic. To be honest I’ve swayed back an forth between fan and foe so many times I feel like the spinning WWE logo on his belt. From what we are led to believe John Cena the real person is nothing short of a workaholic. He puts his reputation and his body on the line every time he steps through the curtain. Of course professional wrestling has nothing to do with what’s ’real’. His character can be nauseating and you can’t blame the casual fan for bringing his (not often her) best booing tone to any given WWE event. My beef is with the ’educated’ wrestling fan. I have to smile every time I type the word educated because more often than not the educated few are actually over-opinionated sewer frogs who’ve lost the concept of what wrestling is all about.
I’m not tarring the IWC with the same brush because there are more than enough sensible folk writing columns and adding their money’s worth. There is also the simple and honest truth that some people just don’t like Cena, for the most part this is a free world and the best part about being a wrestling fan is expressing your opinion. I’m targeting the few who personally attack John Cena like he’s just offended their mothers. Chants of ’f*** You Cena’ sum up the general attitude towards a man who at his core is a hard working, entertaining and now an ever more ring competent WWE Superstar. His match with Shawn Micheals at Wrestlemania had a classic feel to it. Their late exchanges and reversals sold it to me as the best pure wrestling match on the card. Although HBK was his masterful self, John Cena came out of it smelling of sweaty roses. I can’t sit here and say that John Cena is the best wrestler in the WWE, this is obviously not true. However he can certainly hold his own and the stigma that he is a useless worker is now a fallacy or a simple excuse. It is an opinion born of listening to people obsessed with wrestling being something focused on moves, high spots and finishes. People who can’t bare to see a character, a man like John Cena at the very top of the wrestling world. This attitude spawns from the mind of the counter-culture crew, drooling over the content of a mid card Indy event irrelevant of its quality. For these are the people who give honest, opinionated and passionate Internet wrestling fans a bad name. Their columns, their comments, they all just give wrestlers, bookers, promoters and writers an excuse to give us a collective middle finger.
The problem with John Cena has got nothing to do with his ability as an in ring technician. The WWE is simply not about technical wrestling and neither is wrestling as a whole. It is about pantomime, it’s a circus. It’s a carnival event that panders to the basic psychology of the human mind. The best in the history of this business have the ability to play and poke at your emotions, not just on the mic, not just during their ring entrance, but by the very way in which they handle themselves in the ring. Something that I have finally started to see in John Cena. The controversy created by ’The Champ’ is down to one thing and one thing only. His character. He is too much of a good guy. He is the perfect boyfriend, the iconic husband. He’s the guy that you me and HHH will never be. Add to this the rumours that he’s actually a nice hard working guy in his real life and the heat towards him becomes blindingly obvious. We are jealous. We might not know it but if you think about it (not too hard mind you it is only wrestling) we are collectively jealous of John Cena. The only way to change this opinion is not by throwing bigger and badder heels at him. Its not even solved by schooling him in the ways of ring psychology. Its done by the stark realisation that most male wrestling fans will not adhere themselves to an individual that your Girlfriend’s parents wished you were.
Professional wrestling isn’t about who can do what move. Its not just about high spots and ring ability. Its about a collection of skills that allow you to control your audience. Some of the best actors in the world can’t hold a candle to Hulk Hogan. That sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Well when you seriously think about Hogan, his career, the way he can make upwards of 80,000 people care 100% about a simple leg drop then it really doesn’t seem so ridiculous after all. What I’m trying to articulate is this; If you are willing to care about the issue of John Cena’s technical wrestling ability then you have not yet grasped what wrestling is really about. I’m not claiming to know it all. Far, far from it. I need to sample many more styles, in several other cultures to comprehend the complexity of the wrestling genre. I can however claim to know that professional wrestling is not about what you can do, its about how you do it.
Tony Hudson
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