10 Things I Hate About John Cena

10. The Real John Cena Won€™t Stand Up

In the last few years, people have felt it important to draw a distinction between €˜John Cena€™, the fifteen-time world champion and heroic never-giver-upperer, and John Felix Anthony Cena, the teen bodybuilder turned wrestler, charity hand-picked representative of the largest wrestling promotion in the world for over a decade. Yes, one€™s a real person and the other is a character he plays on television, and yes, it€™s important to know which one you€™re talking about, especially given the fact that they look so similar and come with the same first and last name. Only - can everyone stop telling us so enthusiastically that they might hate the character, but that in real life John Cena is a stand-up guy, a sweetheart, a paragon of virtue etc etc? I understand that making sure that people differentiate between the two is important, but it€™s not €˜devil€™ for one and €˜angel€™ for the other. I know almost nothing about John Felix Anthony Cena, and the same goes for almost everyone reading this article. The man behind the gimmick remains a cipher: every time he's interviewed out of character, he's presenting only the corporate line, in the corporate style. It's just another character. Yes, that cheerfully corporate character does some amazing work for charity. I know that the effect Cena's had on the Make A Wish kids he's worked with is just wonderful - but charity work is part of his job (which nets him millions of dollars a year), so that€™s not the most reliable barometer of whether he€™s a cool dude or not in real life. Jimmy Saville did loads of charity work, and that department store Santa is a drunk who lives alone. Perhaps you've heard about all the allegations of repeated infidelity when Cena was married, and the muttering about his apparently deliberate burial of stars that might have proven a threat to his spot. To hear his detractors talk, he's killed as many careers as Triple H, just with a smile on his face instead of a sledgehammer in his hand. I'm sure there's just as much exaggeration and misunderstanding there as there is in all the talk of his imminent sainthood. The real John Felix Anthony Cena could be an angel, or he could be the devil: but he's far more likely to represent a moving point on that spectrum, like everyone else, and the only people who'll ever know for sure are his friends and family. Since that's the case, let's stop pretending that we know enough about the real life John Cena to fawn all over him.