It's too bad they wastefully gave it to Cena last year (in a silly four-man tournament--during which he squashed CM Punk like he was Zack Ryder--ugh!), because it probably should have been CM Punk last year, or Randy Orton, or possibly Chris Jericho again (between Punk's MITB run, through his feud with Jeff Hardy, it's enough material for him to be strongly considered, Orton because of his massive heel push from January through the next ten months of the year as kind of the de facto top figure on the Raw brand throughout that entire stretch and Jericho went from his Legends feud to his great feud with Rey Mysterio to revitalizing the Tag Team Championship). The first stretch of 2009 or so was Cena at his most directionless as a main-eventer since getting to the big-time in my estimation. We've talked a lot about Orton being the MacGuffin in the Cena/Nexus struggle this fall, but in early 2009, it was Cena playing the MacGuffin role in other people's feuds. They used him as the centerpiece of the power struggle between JBL and HBK early on, then threw him into his most uninvolving Wrestlemania program as part of the love triangle with Edge, Big Show and Vickie. They used that catapult him into one last final program with Edge, which was okay, but had a very distinct "been there, done that five million times" feel to it. Then there was his gloriously epic feud with Big Show, which yielded such great masterpieces at Judgment Day and Extreme Rules. (One rule of the 'net is you have to spell it out when you're being sarcastic. I am.)
Honestly, the only thing that was interesting about Cena in the first half of '09 was The Miz calling him out over and over, and his interactions (which were very, very few) with Miz. That was WWE creative using Cena in an unusual way, to get some guy airtime, mic time and promotion time, and we've just now seen the culmination of that once-small snowball beginning to fall down the cliff for Miz.
The latter half of 2009 was better for Cena, but, yeah, you guessed it, his feud was with Randy Orton. Even by that point that feud had felt played out, but WWE went to the well once more, and it gave us one of each guy's worst match ever at Summerslam, but they followed it up at Breaking Point with an instant classic "I Quit." Hell in a Cell was decent, Bragging Rights was an overbooked, contrived Iron Man but both guys still gave solid performances. After that, you had one of the worst builds to a WWE Championship match ever with Cena taking on both members of DX in a triple threat at Survivor Series.
As for drawing emotion and getting Cena back on his A-game, people underrate the Sheamus elevation in late Nov.-early Dec. Some of those promos of Cena confronting Sheamus still linger for me. Obviously the first confrontation the night Sheamus won the Battle Royale to become #1 contender with Jesse Ventura there, with Jesse talking about the "conspiracy" of Cena being promoted as The Top Guy; and the next week, with Carlito confronting Cena over much the same; and finally the week after that which concluded with an excellent promo between both men during which Cena stole the show speaking in almost martyr's language about all of the sacrifices he's given to be where he is, etceteras. It was some of the best foreshadowing of a Cena heel turn ever (the Nexus stuff is great but ironically he's farther away from turning heel right now than he has been in a while because Barrett is assuming the top heel role, and Cena's war against Nexus even while a technical member is nothing short of heroic).
So, what I'm saying is that they kind of blew it when they gave the 2009 Superstar of the Year award to Cena. And I say that because he has been, without a shadow of a doubt, the Superstar of the Year of 2010. This has been his richest, most fulfilling, most daring and challenging year in a long time. No longer stuck in that three-headed merry-go-round of futility with Cena/Triple H/Orton from '09, no longer just kind of resembling a de facto placeholder of sorts at the very top, Cena's been redefined and digging down deep throughout the entirety of this whole year. From his confrontation with Vince, involvement with Bret Hart, fantastic feud with Batista, to his giving Evan Bourne a rub, to most definitively his feud with Nexus, this really has been Cena's year. Somebody in WWE creative realized that they had had him primarily treading water for most of 2009. 2010's Superstar of the Year is definitely Cena.
Also, you it's storyline milk and honey because it presents the quandary of how to present a fired guy the Superstar of the Year award. Delicious irony, yeah!
