I'm not bashing Cena as a real life person, I appreciate his work. What I don't like is the writing. Hear me out here, this isn't a typical 'Cena has 5 moves' topic.
WWE is PG, thus, they want to portray John Cena as a squeaky clean family friendly babyface who beats the bad guys and isn't afraid of anything. But in his feuds if you think about it from a neutral standpoint, he is one of the more heelish, dishonest babyfaces of our time, but he gets cheered for it because he's a good guy. This wouldn't be a problem if he were an anti-hero like Stone Cold, but he's not. He's meant to be family friendly. This sends a mixed message.
One of the first examples of this was when John Cena procured his championship match at WrestleMania XXV. In order to insert himself in the match, Cena obtained footage of Vickie having an affair with the Big Show, and blackmailed Vickie into adding him into the match between Edge and Big Show. After Vickie agreed, Cena proceeded to show the footage anyway. If Cena was not the babyface, this would clearly be an utterly despicable move...sure, Vickie as a heel may have deserved to have her affair revealed, but the way Cena used that information to his advantage, and then revealing it anyway, sends a rather poor message that 'blackmail is okay'. Am I really supposed to cheer this guy?
Then comes the Cena vs Batista feud. There were 2 things that Cena did that I feel disagree with his face persona. The first being his Last Man Standing match with Batista. Neither man would be knocked down for a 10 count, so what does John Cena do? He duct-tapes Batista to the post, making it so he can't physically get up and can't answer the 10 count. The whole point of the match is to -beat- your opponent so they can't stand up. Winning like that via a technicality is very at odds with his 'never give up, never say die' attitude, but he is cheered for it by default because surprise, he's the babyface. I would expect that sort of thing from a chickenshit heel, and it would have been a great move. But alas, we get more dishonesty from Cena.
That doesn't end the problems with the feud though. At the end of the Cena vs Batista feud, he threatens to AA Batista off of a vehicle through the stage if he doesn't quit. Batista quits....and is then thrown anyway, putting him in a wheelchair and resulting in him quitting the WWE. Once again, Cena does the heel thing, this time going beyond merely revenge and presumably ending someone's career.
The most recent and heinous example is in the Nexus feud. Cena is either free or fired at Survivor Series, and he choose to be fired. You would think then, that he would honor that stipulation, Cena saying he would be a man of his word, and he actually bids farewell to the WWE in a heartfelt speech...which he then takes a crap on later when he repeatedly runs in and attacks Nexus. No longer even being an employee of the company, anyone else would be arrested, but he gets, yet again, a free pass because he's a face. He pretty much laughs off the fired stipulation and shows up on the show every night to assault Nexus members, promising to stop the attacks if he's hired back.
So he's hired back....and proceeds to attack every member of Nexus at TLC, and then not only beat Wade pillar to post in the match, but proceeds to assault him after the match. As a person, does Wade deserve it? Maybe so. But it was unnecessary, and Cena once again broke his word and didn't just go after him, but the rest of Nexus.
This may seem uptight to you. You may say I'm looking too much into things. But these are things that occurred to me while watching. I'm not overanalysing, I don't feel. I feel these are very valid observations of the way Cena's character has been written, and for a family friendly character, he is seen doing bad things in 'revenge' to heels that are at odds with his characters, and sends an unfriendly message to the kids watching. I wanted to provide a different perspective.
And I don't hate Cena as a person or even a wrestler. I hate the people that are writing him, and the WWE for portraying him as a man who can do no wrong, when in reality, his character is full of holes because of how they are writing him.
Does anyone else feel this way? Please discuss, and please no flames for me actually having an opinion on wrestling.
