8 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 13th)
5. What A Hero
As he has been for several years, John Cena is regularly portrayed as the virtuous babyface, standing up for the United States and his beloved CeNation. But Monday, fans might have seen a little mischievousness creep into Cenas persona. While sitting in on commentary during the Rusev/Cesaro/Kevin Owens triple threat for a shot against Cena, John bragged multiple times about how he was going to be fresh for his match. True, he put over all three competitors and talked about the importance of being a fighting champion, but little comments throughout and stretching when he thought the match was almost over just felt off for someone like Cena. He then went into his match against Rusev and started dancing around, shrugging to the fans as an exhausted Rusev struggled to stand and almost taking him for granted. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this, it goes back to the argument that Cena is supposed to be the role model for all the kids in the audience. It might be nitpicking, but something about Cenas antics rubbed the wrong way. The problem is, if anyone else did this, you might think he was sowing seeds of a heel turn. But with Cena, its just one of those things.
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.
