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Posts Tagged ‘John Cena’

Exciting, but way overbooked. That’s how the match felt as John Cena met a rejuvenated Randy Orton and persevered through three false finishes – including apparent interference by a fan (who may have been a WWE plant) – to win and retain the WWE title.

This major PPV win should put Orton on the map as a legit title-holder since he’s often been pegged with the “transitional champ” label – unfairly so. Orton has evolved into one of the top heel champs in recent WWE history, probably the best since Triple H’s title runs of the late 90s and early 2000s. (Some folks will rely on their online backup to remember that far back, I’ll bet.)

Anyway, it was a great match if a bit overplayed.

WWE Superstar John Cena will appear in a prominent role one the third-season premiere of PSYCH, the USA original series, this Friday following the Smackdown broadcast on MyNetworkTV. This news brings together two of my favorite things: a WWE superstar who can act, and my current favorite USA suspense-comedy.

PSYCH features James Roday as a faux psychic detective who’s just a really good observer of the world around him. The show’s a laugh riot, especially with the off-screen chemistry between Roday and co-star Maggie Lawson spilling over onto the small screen. Makes a person want to tell their moving companies Los Angeles is the place to be!

I remember “The Miz” from his days as a Real World star on MTV. The guy was tall but scrawny back then, and when he came into the WWE with his Miz gimmick intact, I was skeptical. But as a comedy character, he’s grown on me.

While it’ll be a while before The Miz has the mic skills to go toe-to-toe with John Cena, I do find his promos somewhat entertaining these days, though he’s taken far less seriously than a life insurance quote.

Still, his new gimmick of coming out every week to call out John Cena, only to be ignored and have The Miz claim a victory over him is a smart, nicely-thought-out gimmick that hopefully WWE has the patience to play out for a nice long while before bringing on the inevitable payoff of having Cena appear and destroy him. The longer it takes to get to that moment, the better.

Here it is! Enjoy!

When a ring vet like JBL is in against a hot headliner like John Cena, the outcome is usually predictable, which is why the secondary story thread of Shawn Michaels being under the employ of JBL was so critical to getting this match over with the audience.

The storyline advanced as Michaels was able to fulfill the technical terms of the contract, super-kicking Cena and putting JBL on top of Cena for the pin, but by superkicking JBL as well, some long-brewing emotional payback was brought to a boil like a bottle of Leptovox in a hot pot, and everyone knows this won’t be the end of it.

One can sense a JBL-Michaels feud match on the slate for WrestleMania, and so the real question mark here is how tonight’s match served to set the table for Cena’s WrestleMania match. Looks like they’ll have to allow a Raw superstar to win the Rumble.

This is the match WWE needed to book to cement Cena’s first-night-back title win at Survivor Series last month, or so the theory goes. The good news is that the match was quite solid.

Jericho, who has been turning in match-of-the-year contenders most of the year with Shawn Michaels, is now primed for a long feud with Cena, and his experience from the extended Michaels feud benefited him tonight. Both Cena and Jericho earned their designer watches tonight, and although Cena predictably won, the match didn’t necessarily resolve the feud, so much as add fuel to the fire.

But considering we’re now in the run-up to WrestleMania, that’s only apropos.

Is John Cena the new Hulk Hogan? And I don’t mean this necessarily in a good way.

While I enjoy Cena as much as the next guy, this return to the ring at Survivor series was an event that resulted in him regaining his World Title on his first night back. That’s the kind of star treatment few in WWE have enjoyed since Hulk Hogan left the company to join WCW.

Injured and returning twice in the last year, Cena’s made a habit of carrying around Swiss Army luggage, it seems, but apparently the World Heavyweight Title is in that bag and he can have it any time he wants.

At least with Triple H, there are marital ties to the McMahon family to explain it. With Cena, it could be another Hogan nightmare all over again, if he lets it go to his head. Time will tell.

According to a recent interview in the New Zealand Herald (of all places), WWE superstar John Cena reveals that while his neck surgery went well, he’s still six weeks to two months away from an in-ring return.

The interview, which never talked about that time Cena wore baby clothes in-ring, quoted Cena as saying, “The spinal cord is a very touchy thing to start messing with and that was a wake-up call that’s for sure…”

One has to wonder if, with a neck injury like this, Cena’s career might have been shortened and will be limited upon his return, much in the way Kurt Angle’s career has been. Although he can continue to wrestle, one might expect a more careful, less risky style from the former champ upon his return to the ring.

This week’s RAW got me to thinking about John Cena’s antics and how they measure up to those commited by Stone Cold Steve Austin in his prime. Watching Raw from a new TV wall mount, I was amused by Cena abusing JBL’s stretch limo, with a little help from Crime Tyme, and for a moment flashed back to some of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s trash-a-limo antics in his fued with Vince McMahon.

It’s an easy and obvious comparison, but is it apt? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much WWE has pulled back from the over-the-top, nearly NC-17 antics that were the hallmark of the WWE Attitude era.

See, when Stone Cold struck out at Vince McMahon’s limo, he left nothing to doubt and no thought uncensored. If he spray-painted anything on McMahon’s limo, it would likely say something like, “Austin 3:16″ or “Kiss My Ass” and then he’d flip off Vinnie Mac and the entire audience while cracking open some brewskis. It was on the surface quite similar, but in execution, much edgier.

Compare that to Cena’s destruction of JBL’s limo. The biggest insult Cena spray-painted? “JBL is poopy!”

Welcome to “Everyone Poops!” your host if John Cena, boys and girls. WWE has arrived safely back on TV-14 territory. Hopefully that will mean more viewers.

In the upcoming Fatal Four-Way match at Backlash, JBL has seemed the odd man out. While Cena, Orton and Triple H belong in the title picture, JBL has seemed like the interloper and the subject of an unmerited push.

That was remidied at the England broadcast of WWE Raw, when JBL cleaned house on both Triple H and current champ Randy Orton, in a well-orchestrated match that made him seem like a world-beater. Sure, John Cena’s absence from Raw made JBL’s victory a bit hollow, but the image of JBL holding Orton’s belt over his head as Raw closed will certainly help give JBL the final push he needs to make the Fatal Four-Way seem like a contest of equals.

After the beating Triple H and Orton took at the hands of JBL, they’ll definitely need some massage therapy to be ready to go again at tonight’s RAW King of the Ring broadcast.

You know, looking back over the main matches at WrestleMania again, I’d have to say that my favorite match was still the WWE title match between Randy Orton, Triple H and John Cena. While the Flair-HBK match had way more emotion, the truth of the matter is that the WWE Title match just had more youth and energy.

You don’t have to be a futures broker to see that John Cena and Randy Orton will be WWE mainstays for some time to come. The question here is where the next big stars are, who are lining up behind them.

I still like the long-term potential of Ken Kennedy and MVP, and Jeff Hardy isn’t exactly new, but his solo work in WWE since returning from TNA is like a fresh start for him. My main complaint, though, is that in both WrestleMania and now the upcoming Backlash, WWE continues to insist on overpromoting the inferior SmackDown brand.

Let’s face it; Raw is where the action is. Let’s start structuring the PPVs to reflect that, shall we?

Inserting John Cena into the Backlash main event wasn’t as well-handled as Triple-H’s insertion. Cena didn’t appear on the show until the second hour, and only after Orton, Triple H and JBL are all the worse for wear due to fighting each other so Triple-H could earn his spot in the match.

While requiring Cena to earn his way into the main event at Backlash gave Cena’s challenge the appearance of being equal to Triple H, keep in mind that H faced a completely fresh Orton and JBL, wheras no matter who he faced, Cena was dealing in storyline with two wrestlers who would have already fought that night.

This is why so many wrestling fans boo Cena and treat him like someone selling wholesale fashion jewelry, rather than lapping up his “the Champ is here!” hype. Of course, there was a way they could have booked Raw to make Cena’s insertion into the match just as thrilling as Triple H’s.

It should have been a 3-on-1 handicap match with Cena having to face Triple H, JBL and Orton, and come away with a win, in order to be inserted into Backlash’s main event. Pulling off a 3-on-1 upset would have made for a higher-odds storyline of overcoming adversity, and the Cena insertion would have gone down better and perhaps even turned some of thosse “boo the babyface” rubes into cheers.