How Good Was John Cena Actually?
Time’s Test
Cena’s work will endure because every match that people give a sh*t about endures. Cena couldn’t throw a dropkick, but he could make the fans care. A million of his peers got that the wrong way ‘round. Can you think of a single John Cena match that played out in front of a quiet crowd? In fact: can you think of a John Cena match that didn’t play out in front of a crowd that wasn’t, at a minimum, wildly enthusiastic?
There’s an exception to prove every rule. The Miz matches are that exception.
Cena’s selling was uneven, his moves were clumsy, and the matches that many people would put forward as his best, the PWG John run, were actually quite shallow, relying on the near-fall spam and multiple finisher kick-outs that other promotions get blasted for.
This doesn’t matter, ultimately: Cena’s matches were loud, vivid, and very dramatic. A lot of his critics and “haters” said that Cena won far too often. He was pushed down your throat. And yet, even at his most pushed, he could still sell a crowd on a pulsating near-fall in almost every single major match - and if that’s because the fans were desperate to see him lose, he was playing heel in front of half of them anyway. It still worked.
Cena’s 2015 stuff was a surreal novelty. There are better “bangers”, but few felt as special. Cena’s real best stuff was genuinely timeless. Soaked in blood and looking desperately in need of a transfusion, his gruesome wars against JBL and Brock Lesnar were objectively, thrillingly, badass. Any “sicko” or any fan into brawls and fights and glorious pro wrestling violence done the old, mythical way loves those matches. Cena was as pure a babyface as they come when he ran the razor, which isn’t discussed enough as a skill. Cena isn’t iconic with the blade, which was banned just three years into his run as a headliner, but in terms of ability, he was up there with the very best.
Some people just can’t abide WWE and the way it presents what it refuses to even call “pro wrestling”. A fan of Mid-South Wrestling or Jim Crockett Promotions could live and die with John Cena on those nights.
Both opposites of the extreme are reached here, in that a lot of John Cena’s stuff was agonising to watch in real time, much less all these years later. That face he pulled when mocking Mr. Kennedy’s ring announcement gimmick? It’s haunting, unbearable, and his TV segments are littered with infinite bags of such garbage.
7/10