On Monday Night RAW on October 27th 2014, John Cena refused an offer from The Authority to join them and was booked into a traditional Survivor Series five-man elimination match as a punishment. Triple H invited him to select any four wrestlers in the back whod team with him: the idea being that no one aside from Cena would stand up against The Authority, and the match would end up being a five-on-one beatdown. Their perfectly reasonable vindictive heel boss strategy made absolute sense in theory: crush the dissent on one of the biggest pay-per-views of the year, making an example of Cena to the entire locker room. Of course, it didnt take into consideration two classically WWE tropes that dont make sense. One, that WWE babyfaces will always buck the system to stand up for themselves against horrible bosses, so of course Cena is going to be able to fill the line-up of his team. Two, that even if he couldnt, Cenas stock-in-trade is overcoming the odds in fact, hes statistically more likely to win a five-on-one elimination handicap match than he is a straight one-on-one wrestling match. As it stood, it didnt matter anyway: Vince McMahon showed up on RAW the following week and added the stipulation that, if The Authority lost at Survivor Series, they would be disbanded and removed from power, with only Cena having the power to bring them back. There was no return stipulation for Cenas team, simply a tough love punishment-style incentive for his daughter and son-in-law not to lose their big match: if they couldnt assert their authority, they didnt deserve to be The Authority. To balance matters out, the Helmsleys made the return stipulation themselves: if Team Cena lost, everyone on the team except Cena would be fired, thereby punishing the rebellious attitudes of the WWE babyface contingent. Now, this is all typically convoluted storytelling but it makes sense. At the show itself, Team Cena won, and The Authority were no more except that on the last RAW of the year, the Big Show and Seth Rollins would hold guest star Edge hostage, threatening to break his neck unless Cena used his make-a-wish to reinstate The Authority. This is Edge, Cenas biggest nemesis back in the day. This is Edge, the Rated R Superstar, the Ultimate Opportunist, a man who cost Cena the WWE championship. These men arent friends, and Cena has no reason to place himself or his Survivor Series buddies in jeopardy to save Edge. Cenas right outside the ring, too - he can clearly get into the ring in time to save Edge. This aint the Kobayashi Maru. Naturally though, John Cena backs down and reinstates The Authority and then Rollins goes to curb stomp fragile little Edge anyway, and Cena bounds effortlessly into the ring and stops him, just like that. So just what was the point in all of this?
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
