6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (17 Mar - Results & Review)

3. Cena Dumps The Fans – All Of Them

Heading into Raw Monday night, all eyes were on John Cena and what he would do in his first appearance since turning on Cody Rhodes at Elimination Chamber. Would he go the minimalist route and say little to nothing? Or would he pour his guts out into the mic and vent for 20 minutes?

Fans got their answer after about 20 minutes, as Cena unloaded on the fans, who were only too happy to give it right back to him throughout the soliloquy. To be fair, this wasn’t a grand slam of a promo, and he might have rambled on a bit too much, but Cena did a laudable job of retconning 20 years of being the ultimate babyface by (surprise!) blaming the fans for taking and taking and taking.

Cena argued that he was a human being who had been bullied by fans to be something he wasn’t, and no matter what he did, it was never enough. He worked hard and started to win (“and win and win and win and win…”) but fans hated that too. Fans never asked about him and what he wanted. He never got anything from the fans, but they constantly took from him. He said that as a result, the fans would get nothing from him: no new look or new music.

Cena’s strongest lines came toward the end as he said fans didn’t support him; they used him as an excuse for their failures. They simply sat on their asses and watched him be great. Then he pointed out a kid in the crowd decked out in fresh Cena gear and said he was over their “toxic dysfunctional relationship.” He closed by saying he was breaking up with every single fan.

Good stuff from Cena, leaving no wiggle room even to be a “cool heel” or anything like that. It lost a couple of points for running as long as it did, but WWE must have figured that they wanted to get it all out here and drive forward these last five weeks.