10 Reasons Why John Cena Heel Turn Would Be ‘Best For Business’

7. It's Fresh Territory For Cena (As Well As For The Fans)...

Faces always make the best heels. They know how to work a crowd, how to get sympathy from a crowd and how/when to stage a big comeback. It therefore makes sense that ex-babyfaces are the perfect heels, because they know how/when to halt a babyface comeback, when to get the crowd super-hot and how to cool them down just before they reach boiling point. Still not convinced? Go back and look at last year€™s SummerSlam main event. During his match with Daniel Bryan, the fans start up with the €œyou can€™t wrestle!€ chants and Cena points to his chest and mouths €œMe?€ in mock dismay, then he grins, slowly at first, but then a little more mischievously. The chants got louder. The heat was undeniable. ...Cena knew what he was doing. Make no mistake, Cena worked that match as the heel, he can do this. Being a heel would bring out a new, uncharted side of Cena€™s personality, in much the same way that his recent work with Bray Wyatt has done. Cena seems to be relishing the opportunity to paint some grey areas onto his squeaky clean on-screen persona, and so far it has created some compelling television (and inspired Cena€™s best promo work in years). A move like this is not without historical precedent, either. In fact, a great many €˜good guy€™ stars are actually much better remembered as heels. Ted DiBiase was an up and coming star in the NWA and had made a name for himself against none other than World Heavyweight Champion Harley Race. If you go back and watch early DiBiase, the clean-cut, son of a legend good guy, you€™ll see almost no signs of the loathsome, egomaniacal €˜Million Dollar Man€™ he would later become in the (then) WWF. Had Ted never turned, some of the most inspired heel work ever performed would never have existed - and pro wrestling as an art form would be all the poorer for it. In fact, many of the great heels in history had at first been popular babyfaces. 70€™s and 80€™s star Bob Backlund waged an improbable 90€™s comeback via a heel turn as the borderline-psychotic €˜Mr. Backlund€™ character, while Nick Bockwinkle, a consistently underappreciated babyface, finally turned heel in 1970, becoming a multi-time World Champion and wrestling industry legend in the process. Bottom line, becoming a heel will give Cena something new to do and the fans will have something new to watch.
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I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ