10 Times WWE Was Totally Better Than Your Fantasy Booking
8. The Direction Of John Cena's Character
Your Fantasy Booking:
Turn him heel. Turn him heel immediately, because the formula is so beyond stale. Everybody mocked John Cena's "baloney, fudge and mustard!" promo, but they themselves flipped out every time Cena got one over on their favourite, emerging talent. And Cena was appalling with it too, which did not help. Almost objectively terrible at selling the imminent threat of a challenge - his "I'm saying stuff you're not politically protected enough to respond to" is what is known, colloquially, as a "c*nt's trick" - he wasn't much good at selling for them in the ring, either. He raced through his comebacks as if he was pulling out.
WWE's Real Booking:
WWE is a business, and the cold fact is that his depiction as a hero was always too lucrative to risk a heel turn. Besides which, WWE transitioned him into the elder statesman role with a shocking elegance. He is unanimously cheered now, to illustrate that, and Roman Reigns has much to do with it. With Reigns on the rise, WWE re-thought Cena as a gatekeeper, a role in which he shone. His United States Open Challenge work was selfless, tremendous - illustrative, perhaps, of the worker Cena might have been, if WWE didn't impose the 'company man' thing on him. He allowed Kevin Owens to look competitive in electric back-and-forth matches, and the narrative finally changed when he handed AJ Styles the key to the house.
And he always was a complete d*ck on promos, so it's not as if we missed out on those.