10 Reasons Why John Cena’s WWE Legacy Is Disastrous
8. Brand: Valued
John Cena's gimmick table is as overstuffed as his t-shirts. A walking advert for WWEShop.com, his predecessors wore their shirts to the ring - but Cena was arguably the first, to use corporate speak, to live the brand values.
Cena was a platform for monetisation, a man whose catchphrases were emblazoned over galleries of garish merch. This ludicrous drive to bring in revenue came at the expense of his character in the fiction of WWE, unravelling it as meaningless in the process. When he was "fired" amid the Nexus angle of 2010, sacrificing the tenet of suspension of disbelief, he turned up on RAW "uninvited" dressed in his usual clobber.
He wasn't a man in a desperate fight for his job. He was the contracted star of an action adventure series ready to return next week, folks. When he joined the Nexus, seven men could not bully him into wearing their t-shirt. In the meantime, head over to WWEShop.com and purchase every colour of the f*cking rainbow.
Consequently, the performers are all brands. When The Shield returned last year, they debuted their new fashion line before they wrestled a match.
Money was once a byproduct of creativity. Now, money drives it. Even if that was always the case, there is no longer any crucial pretence to the contrary.