Do you blame his run on top as the face of the company as one of the big reasons for why today the product is so...

>Wasn't Cena a draw?

no

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It's interesting to me because I started watching during 2008, only Smackdown because I hated Cena and he was on RAW. Triple H was having a year long reign at that time and he never lost that fucking belt until November to Edge by a screwjob and then it was dropped to Jeff Hardy the following month in a triple threat.
Right now I go back and watch the Ruthless Agression Era, specially RAW, and I honestly love the feuds with Triple H and all. I mean, it doesn't look THAT bad. It's just some key moments where he should have lost, without a doubt, and he fucking didn't.

No. Cena is a top 5 draw of all time for the WWE. The problem is Vince. The attitude era was a a fluke, and he’s always had no idea what modern audiences want. Of course he’s not going to know when he’s in his 70s.

Sheamus killed the fucking ratings during 2015

I'm going to turn heel by bumping my own post

That was after the belt was vacated. That took the wind out of everybody's sails.

>Do you blame the talent for the overall state of the company?
No, and you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to do that.

What's funny is how there's this whole 1984 thing going on where John is suddenly forgiven and all his monster run were justifiable. Is the product now just that bad we go full revisionist, or is Vince plan actually had some truth to it because no matter how bad the run is, its a very memorable one.

That why I created this thread. Since Cena's US title run in 2015, it seems like the entire horrendous Cena era has been forgotten

No because Vince didn't cave in to smark interest with shitters as top champs like Kofi and Seth freaking lolins.
Apart from the shitty booking on Vince's part Cena was everything good and classic about wrestling. he had the look, A+ mic skill and he always made an impact in the ring .

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Blame Haitch and management more than anything. Everything outside of the Edge feud lasted way too fucking long.
The only thing I hold over the guy in hindsight was burying the Nexus.

you had to be there. It's easy to go back now and think of it as fine when you know what happens later on but at the time he smothered the show and smothered anyone from getting over.

no these mark e-goobers blame trips for everything wrong in the world

honestly it started in 2001 after wcw died and vince let his petty bullshit get in the way and fuck up the invasion angle. tons of people stopped watching wrestling and never came back.

Nope. Without John Cena wwe wouldve already gone under like in 2004. Hes literally the only good thing

Nexus was a bunch of dimeless janettys, literally not one single guy in that whole group could even lace up Grand Master Sexay's boots (RIP). Johny did us a favor saving use from that trash heap. Literally just look
>Fatsky Wyatt
>Brian Waffle House Cook
>Cryback
>Carrot Top
Throw in a literal homo, black Bane, and the fucking guy from the view and that's your whole stable

Definitely. You can't have someone who's getting booed by half of the audience be your Austin. WWE basically told the fans to either like what they're told to like and hate what they're told to hate or fuck off, and the fans chose the latter.

When I think about it, Cena's progression as a character aligned with the company's shift away from being a product that rowdy men could enjoy, too. He got over as a badass shit-talking heel, spent a brief period as a badass shit-talking tweener, and then turned into a complete white hat that was literally aimed at making single mothers want to buy their ten year olds jerseys. Note that those ten year olds are conspicuously absent today. Good plan, Vince.

Absolutely this 100%. Cena and Batista brought things back up in 2005, and then yeah, there was a slow decline after that, but that accelerated greatly once Cena was no longer top guy after 2014.

I started watching around 1999. I stopped watching for many years after the Benoit tragedy. Didn't come back until 2014-ish. I was stunned that Cena was STILL the world champion/in the main event scene.

Yes but I feel like it's becoming less and less of a reason.
Super Cena was bad, and Super Roman was worse, but Cena is gone and Roman isn't being booked AS absurdly. All that's left is Vince being Vince.

I fucked off when Super Cena was a thing and figured that it was targeted to kids, so I jumped ship to lucha and Dragon gate

Fast forward to now and I laugh at the majority of the people watching WWE (50+ year olds)

He was a symptom. The worst you could blame on Jhon was that his overness allowed everyone else to become complacent. If they didn't have such a monstrous draw they would have had to face reality a decade earlier.

I think he is largely responsible for the cynicism you see in WWE crowds today. He pretty much killed the morality play aspect of WWE by being a hero no one cheered.

Him, HHH and Jasethy.

It’s fickle smarks swooning because Cena put over some indie darlies

going "pg" unironically slowed the decline (as much as some people do not want to admit it) but having boring guys with no character like cena, after they abandoned his rapping gimmick, at the top absolutely killed interest in wwe and continues to do so today.

Who else were they going to put up there? That's been the real problem with the WWE. They can't make any stars. Especially not top guys.
Cena and Umaga both made each other look great. Umaga didn't need the belt.
Daniel Bryan got runs with the titles while Cena was there. He got over on his own.
Same goes for Punk. Cena being the top guy didn't stop Punk and Bryan.
Could they have put Bray Wyatt over strong? Maybe. Would top heel Bray Wyatt really move the needle?
Should Cena have passed the torch to the Shield? Given the even steeper decline in ratings since the Shield became the top guys, I would say no.
Cena put over Lesnar huge. Didn't move the needle.
Cena put over Owens clean on his first night. But I don't think Owens should be the face of the company over Cena.
Point is, I can't really think of anyone who wasn't given a chance to succeed because the office likes Cena better. This isn't like the Triple H reign of terror, where Hunter could have put over half a dozen guys who would have done better as the top guy (Kane, Booker, RVD, Jeff Hardy, Benoit etc)

It's not Cena's fault this company can't book for shit.

correct answer

And before anyone says Triple H put over Benoit, they had zero build up in that feud, Benoit was just the Royal Rumble winner finally getting his long-deserved shot. They added Shawn Michaels and really made the feud about Shawn vs Triple H (this is Benoit giving both Hunter and Shawn their best Wrestlemania main event either would ever have, by the way). What should have been an emotional Benoit story got watered down.
In fact, the next month they did the triple threat again (Benoit makes Shawn tap), then at the next Raw PPV, the main event was Shawn and Triple H, Benoit beat Kane in the under card.
Benoit won the title, but the office didn't make him look super strong.

>destroy something that was built up
>now they literally have nothing left for YEARS
>think that this is a good thing
You are a incredibly retarded.

The Authority killed wwe

No

Cena being the top guy was never a problem.

Him having the same boring plucky babyface gimmick for years was the issue.

All the goats turned heel to reinvent themselves. Hogan, Miz, Punk, DBry

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A lot of us never hated Cena because we grew up with babyface Hulk Hogan back in the day.

No, he's not very good. Then again, he's not for us.

I'm not saying that plan WORKED, because the business is in tatters right now, but some of us don't hold that against Cena.

yeh he killed the WWE

It started then but if you look at individual buyrates and show by show ratings, 2002/2003 is a fucking massacre. Invasion got close to a million buys, it was mostly just through intrigue that went unrealized but the angle picked business back up for a short while, plus you also have shows like Mania 18 that did very well off the back of Rock/Hogan. It's everything after that, with HHH at the helm, where things really bottom out. Anybody that had stuck around after 2001 fucked off for good.

Vince, Triple H and Steph killed WWE

Partially. John accidentally exposed how much WWE relys on the 'top guy' to carry the entire brand instead of building a solid foundation like they had in the RocknWrestling/Attitude/Ruthless agression eras. When John was the top face, he became the ONLY wreslter you had to know, while in past eras you had to know and understand multiple wrestlers characters.

I killed the WWE.

Go to bed, Vince.

>putting those simps in the same fucking text as the Hulkster
2/10 bait, guess it made me reply

It was the start but not the main reason. The 5 years of forcing Roman as the top baby face was where the company lost it. Fans rejected him pretty much the second they started his singles push, because they were booking him exactly like Cena. Fans were tired of Cena so you decided to book Roman as Samoan Cena?! It took almost a year for them to drop Roman doing cheesy promos and mugging at the camera to realize that fans just dealt with 12 years of Cena doing the same shit. By then the damage was already done.

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>monstrous draw
lmao

>JBL
>2005
>RAW ratings

>Note that those ten year olds are conspicuously absent today
Former 10 year old here, and I abandoned the product around the time they turned the FU into the "attitude adjustment". Fuck that.

I watched during attitude era. When I saw him representing the WWE I thought he was a huge fucking dork and there was no way I'd be watching this shit again. He just wasn't cool to me when I was around the age of 16-20. I don't have that immediate gut reaction of hate to him anymore, he's pretty harmless compared to a lot of shit they put on the screen nowadays. But I would pinpoint that as the start of the steep and rapid decline that followed. They need to figure out how to stop being so corny.

Yes definetly, it started going downhill once he got to the top.

He made WWE look fucking lame and dorky. Rise of the PG era was the final nail in the coffin for wrestling.almost all of his gimmicks and promos were fucking cringe.

Hes not the whole reason, but definitely a major part in it.

Wrestling dead no one even watches it amymore.

Went from jerry springer to dr phil

>RVD
>4.2

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>a vacant title outdraws HHH

Literal anti-draw

>hogan going heel is the direct definition of lightning in a bottle.
>punk shot himself in the foot with UFC.
>bryan is an overrated wrestler who will always be the K-mart brand benoit.
>who the hell even remembers the miz as a babyface?

if a heel turn for cena were to work it would have to be the same kind of lightning in a bottle scenario that hogan had.

>"cena is not a draw"
>is in the top 3 highest ratings
????

ratings drop nearly every time he was champ

>that edge
Do you want further proof that edge and lita were pure kino together?

also

>ratings killer cm phil mendez
>sheamuzzz
>triple h confirmed anti-draw
>cena also confirmed as an anti-draw
>el patron outdrew all of the four above at some point
>based mr. monday night rvd drawing the house

lmao! i'm saving this list to trigger a certaing faggot

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>Ratings drop every time Cena or Orton wins it
>Increase whenever they lose it
>These were the generation-defining stars

Ya he's trash. Moving him to Raw and dumping Jericho even though Jericho was leaving for real was like bye Raw. Hello John Cena show. Smackdown was slightly more family friendly and that's how it should have stayed Raw had no teeth the day he showed up

Symptom, not cause