Fans love to chant, You cant wrestle! at John Cena whenever they get a chance, but it really doesnt hold water when you look at his in-ring work, especially lately. Sure, Cena fell into the trappings of a paint-by-numbers style for several years, but he has shown in recent months that he can vary his style and moveset depending on the opponent. Throughout the John Cena U.S. Open Challenge since WrestleMania, Cena has consistently had solid matches, sometimes the best match on Raw. Monday nights bout against Neville was no exception. In wrestling the rookie for 15 minutes, Cena not only made Neville look good by giving him a ton of offense, he was just about ready to possibly lose his title before Rusev interfered which made perfect sense because it preserved the title match for Payback. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNgvsu3cKuE You cant have a guy lose too many matches early in his career without it hurting him, but this performance by Neville was the kind of thing that shows hes being taken seriously by the company. Cena didnt just overpower him, leaving Adrian to use high-flying moves to gain an advantage. Neville used some mat wrestling and pure strength of his own to take control. Say what you will about Cena dominating the mid-card of WWE, but having solid one-off matches like this help a lot more than Cena running through Curtis Axel or Big Show while talking about winning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for the 83rd time.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
