Monday Morning Backlash: John Cena as Super Cena is Right for WWE

Columns, Top Story

On Monday Night Raw last week, John Cena defeated Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler at the same time, leading many to herald the return of “Super Cena” and decry WWE for this. Well, those people are wrong, and John Cena defeating these two alone was absolutely the right move, the very best move WWE could have made.

First, the immediate concerns – John Cena is challenging for the WWE Title. His claim for that challenge is about equal with CM Punk, who beat him twice for the belt, as compared to Cena’s winning once for the challenge. This leaves Cena looking weaker than he has in years when he’s expected to pop a buy-rate with an unproven new champion. To be a legitimate contender immediately, he needs wins. Further, the stronger he looks, the stronger Alberto Del Rio will look for (presumably) beating him. Two heels couldn’t handle Cena, but Del Rio, even cheating, will.

The other immediate concern is the damage this does to Swagger and Ziggler. That damage is nil. These two are building heat over who Vickie Guerrero will side with. Cena being able to beat them at the same time due solely to miscommunication, as it was, doesn’t make them look weak, but it does make it seem as if they cannot possibly co-exist. Swagger seems set to be the heel here, and he’s the one that lost most cleanly to Cena. That’s fine – the top face will defeat a middling heel cleanly. Ziggler is being set to be a face, had the advantage, and really seemingly lost because of Swagger directly. Thus, the loss isn’t his fault and he can be repositioned as a dangerous babyface – Scott’ Keith’s recent rant on Curt Hennig vs. Roddy Piper put me to mind that if Ziggler can be Hennig like as a heel, he can surely channel that into some of the more technical Piper face-work (against Bret, also in Portland) and prove to be quite a big deal indeed. It’s worth a shot, and this loss surely doesn’t hurt that.

Finally, we have the main and most important reason that Cena needs to stay strong. It ties into issue #1, but is more big picture. There absolutely needs to be a few top faces that don’t lose regularly. Heels, even great heels, can lose pretty much constantly and still keep their heat, elevating guys along with them, but for a face, they absolutely must remain strong – nearly invincible. The reason for this is that when they do lose, they are taken to the limit, and they do have an amazing match, it can create a new star. John Cena lost twice to CM Punk and it feels bigger than anything Triple H can possibly do for Punk, and since we want Cena’s statement that only Punk among active wrestlers can hang with him to actually contain gravitas, well, Cena has to show it to be true, not just say it. Others can hang with Cena by cheating, but Cena can just straight up beat anyone but Punk cleanly. Thus, Cena being a big effing deal helps to do the exact same thing for other wrestlers, in this case, CM Punk.

But this isn’t a phenomenon limited to CM Punk. There was a period of time where Triple H never lost. He just didn’t put people over for years on end, even as a face. Eventually, though, he did decide to put some people over, and they became two of the most marketable WWE stars in recent memory – John Cena and Jeff Hardy. The Undertaker almost never loses, and besides the Great Khali hiccup, when he did in great matches with Batista, Brock Lesner, and, even further back, Mick Foley, stars were born. I hated watching him crush CM Punk and plenty of others as much as anyone, but it did serve a purpose. Even Bret Hart, a guy never notable for not jobbing, jobbed rarely and made his losses mean something, whether to make Davey Boy Smith, help make Shawn Michaels, or, even late career, give Booker T a rub. A major face, or rather the major face of the company has to be kept almost absurdly strong in order to be able to make new, marketable stars when the time comes, even when that time isn’t as regularly as we fans would like.

All of which, in a roundabout way, brings me to final side-note about Kurt Angle. Angle, in his time in TNA, almost never jobs. He crushed Samoa Joe’s heat and beat pretty much everyone who wasn’t a hugely established star elsewhere. He’s won in great matches, Matt Morgan and Ken Anderson come to mind, and thus been responsible for much of some younger guys’ heat, but he simply doesn’t lose to them cleanly one-on-one. That has to change at Bound for Glory. Not since Samoa Joe when Angle first arrived has TNA had a guy so set to take the leap into stardom as Robert Roode. He’s the full package – a great worker with a great look who can talk. One can argue he isn’t as over as the company might like, but that’s in large part due to him being in a memorable tag team for so long. The team is extremely over, but he as a member is just a run-of-the-mill upper-card face. TNA has, however, been showing him as a credible challenger for some time and, now, it is time for him to take the next step. For once, TNA must put the new guy over Kurt Angle, and it must be a great, talked about match. Robert Roode might be the last guy TNA has that’s relatively clean and untouched by the company’s general madness. Here’s hoping he rides that into being the company’s savior and making it watchable. Kyle Sparks thinks James Storm costs Roode the match in a huge swerve, and, rightly, thinks of it as the worst thing possible to happen. Building up that huge name all that time only works if when the stage is big and the time is right, he makes someone else be at his level. John “Super” Cena has done that. Will Angle?

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.