I also like Cena a lot, but his gimmick is what bothers me. I would be really intrigued if they did a storyline where he got a lot of losses, which would force him to come up with some new moves. The FKS is horrible, and makes no sense at all. The FU is really outdated, and doesn't really look that believable as a powerfull finisher imo. I think the STFU is okay, and looks pretty cool.
I just don't understand why they can't update the moves of someone with such great in-ring abilities. He already has the size, the attitude and the mic-skills of a great champon.
Also, I don't think there is any way that he is turning heel, ever. Pretty much because of his fanbase and the fact that they have taken his face-gimmick so far that there is no believable way to turn him.
On a side note, SD/RAW has been a lot better these past couple of weeks imo, and I absolutely love the Christian heel turn. There is a lot of potential for some good feuds, and I hope they don't butcher this potential.

Really?

And for the record, Shawn Michaels was also beloved amongst children and chicks. The only hate he ever got from smarks was for his backstage ****.

I'm not sure anybody disagrees with that point. He has a job, he does it well, it makes him the face of the company, he makes a few dollars. The problem I have with him was stated by LKJ.

Those two sentences contradicted how?

And Shawn Michaels had a WWE-crafted PG-friendly character where he was the Hulkster of his generation and pretty much the persona of the most stand up guy in the world?

Stone Cold is also loved by everyone. Same for Taker. none of them were given the role Cena was though.

Hate the writers/direction of the WWE then. My posts today started with a "Bedreviter, are you a Cena-fan?". And yes, Im a fan of the wrestler Cena. I have no problem seeing why people disagree with the current direction of the WWE, Im not a huge fan myself.

I'm so confused as to how this is unclear.

You acted like there's a knee-jerk reaction to hating on a guy who women and children love. The most popular guy in the company at any given point is going to invariably be someone who women and children love. Hence, you strongly implied that smarks are going naturally react with hatred toward the most popular guy.

You introduced the PG qualification later. And again, that doesn't even do much to strengthen your point. Basically every character going today is PG-friendly. There are any number of PG-friendly faces in the WWE today that have a very positive image in this thread.

When I say PG-friendly relating to Cena I thought it was obvious I referred to his Captain America-gimmick. Not to him not swearing/having sex on stage. Yes, of course, in a PG-programming, everything is PG-friendly, but I figured it was obvious what was meant with PG-friendly (*especially considering how common it is to hear that regarding Cena).

Im talking about the reaction among "wohoo, I cleared puberty yesterday, now Im off to be cool and hard-core"guys who need to distance themselves from what children and girls like. Have you not noticed the "oh, look at the crowd. only kids love Cena. Cena is made for the children. Oh, his jokes are funny for 6 year olds" ?

How about if I just hate him for performing moves sloppy and no-selling?

I disagree on the sloppy moves. Of course there are some, but not to the extent that it stands out. Of course he´s no CM Punk or Bryan Danielson, but he´s a good wrestler.

The no-selling isn´t Cenas fault (neither the wrestler nor the person), so thats a "I hate WWE-writing"-issue.

Ok you won me over, Cena is awesome.

I know

I'm gonna have to agree with this one after all. He went 1 hour with HBK and they didn't know it until the last minute so they had to improve which lead to the WWE MOTY.

My gripe with Cena is the crappy promos which is odd compare to him during the doctor of thugonomics days where people at that time wanted him to take down JBL for the WWE title now it just seems stale. Now I'm not saying to turn him heel because the fact he has a huge fanbase. Well, I don't know what to expect maybe to not play the puppet of the company boy too often especially in matches note the last few I quit matches he had (except the one with JBL I heard that one was good.)

I dunno if amp means it, but Cena is notoriously bad for no selling **** beyond the usual hulk up moments. He will have a leg worked over for 20 minutes, sell it during the match then after the bell just calmly walk away all smiles as if nothing happened. You can tell a lot about a performer not just by what they do from bell to bell.

The last "I quit"-match was a travesty. But as much as it cemented Cena as superman, it was more about defining Miz´character. Miz was ruthless, evil, someone who would do anything, and enjoying being evil. For that purpose, it was quite successful. Miz tapping out in 3 seconds wasn't that out of character either.

I'm going to try and explain this as best I can because I've thought about this discussion a lot.

I admit to being a big Cena fan but not of his character in WWE, but of what he really could accomplish if he wasn't forced into this goody-two-shoes gimmick.

For one, Cena has incredible stamina. If you watch some matches on stro's JTV channel you will notice a huge difference between the top guys of then and Cena. They get winded and tired after 10 minutes, even the guys like Luger, Rick Rude, Sting, Flair, and others who were in phenomenal shape. Cena never seems to get tired and doesn't seem to sweat all that much either. Back when Hogan was the guy he'd go through the same routine but towards the end of the match, Hogan would be covered in sweat and he'd do a good job of selling the fact that he was pretty tired (until the hulking up routine). But that was part of his gimmick: he started the matches quickly on offense, the heel would gain the upper hand through cheating or being too fat (Andre, Yoko, Earfquake) and they'd pummel Hogan for 10 minutes, but he'd summon the powers of the Hulkamaniacs to will him to recover, blah blah blah. It's great for the kiddies but for us adults its stupid. That's kind of a big reason why Hogan's popularity diminished: the kids grew up and weren't being replaced fast enough.

But with Cena you don't really understand why/how he recovers so fast. WWE doesn't really explain it with anything. His health just rejuvenates like in Halo (thanks Botchamania) and he ignores whatever was happening to him previously. This riles us smarks up because we understand that a human being who's been beaten by another human being for 10 minutes is going to have some sort of lasting effect. Also UFC has taught us this as well so suspension of disbelief is much harder. Unfortunately Vince has decided that he doesn't care about any of this with Cena and this is how its gonna be because Cena is the face of the franchise and Vince doesn't want him to appear too weak or vulnerable for too long. That's 100% on Vince and you can't really blame Cena for that.

As far as promos go, again, Cena probably has some sort of input over what he says in promos but that stuff is written for him by creative who are taking orders from Vince. Vince wants Cena to continue to be the goody-two-shoes fight-for-whats-right-fight-for-your-life guy, and Cena isn't going to change it. Merchandise and advertising revenue is what it is because Vince has created Cena to be the kiddie hero and has gone away from the Attitude Era.

Speaking of which, that is another reason why fans dislike Cena more than they probably should. We are coming off the Attitude Era and Cena is the main guy after it. We all loved the AE because it catered to us: the 18-49 male demographic. It also helped that WWE needed to push the boundaries in order to compete with WCW because our demographic is the most important in terms of ratings. Once WCW went away, Vince realized he no longer needed to push the envelope and could gradually scale things back so that he could attract more ad revenue.

Anyway, back to Cena. Amplify and others have mentioned his moveset. Again, this is a product of Vince and his decision to pretend its not a wrestling show as well as protecting his #1 guy. There is ZERO reason Cena should be busting out new moves and taking any real risks in the ring. Guys are going to get injured, its really only a matter of time before something breaks or snaps. Adding higher risk moves to Cena's arsenal would open him up to becoming injured and Vince can't have that. It was the same with Hogan. Hogan could work a match if he needed to but there was no reason for it. They had the formula and there was no logical reason to change it. There's only a very small percentage of fans who really care about the in-ring work. As long as its not a botch fest or a rest hold fest, most people don't care. We shouldn't really hate on Cena's workrate because he is held back a lot by Vince and creative who just don't care about you ROH fanboys who want to see 5* matches all the time.

At this rate there would have to be something drastic to happen for Vince to want to turn Cena. He's too much of a cash cow.

Bedreviter, I do not hate the "WWE-written" John Cena character as much as I hate THE WAY he plays the character.

Even when Hogan was doing his thing he was never as goofy as Cena. By acting so goofy, it makes it just about impossible to take any of his opponents serious as real threats to him and his title.

i said this was the case through LKJ in my post. i hate the creative team which makes me not want to see Cena on my tv. see how that works?

How have they not done a Vince vs. Cena feud in all this time? Granted VMK is way too old to do more than maybe a street fight match, but every top face of the company always had some great storyline vs. Vince in one way or another (Austin, Rock, Hogan, HBK, HHH to name a few). It's always been a moneymaker feud, and I'd have some sort of hope Cena wouldn't be cutting crappy poop joke promos every single time vs. the owner of the company. Have some fresh heel that Cena hasn't demolished be managed/represeted by Vince and get a huge push/heat. Considering they've recycled a million feuds the last few years, not sure why they can't recycle a good one like this.

I'm almost certain that the vast majority of hate here is for John Cena the on-screen character, not John Cena the man. Most of us have openly agreed on that at times.

If a character gets nothing but bad writing, then whether it's the actor's fault or not, people are going to begin to resent and hate the character that's on the screen in front of them. When I hear Cena's music hit at the beginning of Raw, I know that I'm probably going to get the **** annoyed out of me for the next 10+ minutes. That's because, whether it's the worker's fault or the writers' fault, the character about to hit the stage is really irritating to me. I can't listen to his drivel and just force myself to think, "Yeah, but this guy is really hard-working and is a great ambassador for the WWE" the whole time, even though I think those things.

I don't think that John Krasinski's acting has gone downhill. I do, however, think that the character Jim Halpert on The Office has gone severely downhill. I simplify my reaction by hating on Jim, and I don't think that I'm discrediting Krasinski by doing so. The same applies here. At present, I hate Cena the character. I think the person behind the character is quite capable, and if given new material I might just love him, but for the moment I'm going to hate away.

Watching the 92 royal rumble match atm and I wonder why they had Rey take the time title from Flair. 92 had such a high caliber line-up and going through that was/is epic. Just HOF'er after HOF'er.

/rant

I'd say it prob had something to do with Flair "retiring" and then going to TnA/Impact.

Rey took the time record many years before the Flair retirement iirc (too lazy to look it up for exactly how many).

And fwiw if anyone would Rey was the perfect person to do so as it maximises the ultimate underdog story that developed that year and it was a real feel good when he won the title in dedication to Eddie even if it was kind of a cynical cash in on the tragedy by the WWE imo.

I was thinking Rey got the record in the last couple years but apparently he got it in 06 and Flair "retired" in 08.

so he was legit injured at wrestlemania?

He's back!