The Essence of a WWE Face: Why John Cena Doesn't Cut It

What makes professional wrestling great? The fact that WWE superstars can be made by the mere crowd and their reactions to their favorite stars.

With that said, the 1980s and the early-to-mid 1990s had many prepackaged faces who were geared towards provoking positive crowd reaction, like Hulk Hogan.

Since the Attitude Era, the fans have grown past the black and white heel and face dynamic of previous storylines, and learned to appreciate wrestler's with ambiguous characters.

In the TV-PG era of the WWE, we have a major face in John Cena. He is rooted on by millions of fans, but let’s face it: kids and women love Cena, but men hate him.

And why is this?

While I’m not a huge fan of John Cena, I can’t help but wonder why he just doesn’t cut the total idea of a face. But, I can understand why people are tired of his superhuman traits.

Still, he has a lot of the characteristics of a great face: a solid amount of moves, pretty solid microphone skills, and a likeable personality. I can’t lie, his music does get me pretty pumped up.

This is the same guy who visits kids at children’s hospitals for the Make a Wish foundation. This is the same guy who acts more like a patriot than Jack Swagger does, who went from the Doctor of Thuganomics to SuperCena.

As great of a guy as he is—and he is definitely a full-on company man—, he has hit the point where he is too much of a good guy.

With his Superman-like physique and his good-guy looks, every time I think of John Cena I see a guy who seems more like a superhero than a professional wrestler. I don’t see Stone Cold, Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Bret Hart, or even Hogan; I see a larger than life character.

While the PG era is not even close to the Attitude era in content, fans are still products of the very same era. Much like McMahon said when defending the Attitude era in the past, fans just don’t really care for the uber-good guys or the uber-bad guys anymore.

Fans have a major tendency to flip between wrestlers, as we may be seeing with a guy like the Miz or Randy Orton.

Which asks the question: What make a great face in the post-Attitude era?

Well, it’s almost as big of a question as what we, as fans, relate to in terms of our characters. Our current professional wrestlers are all characters. It's their skill, look, and character storylines that solidify what we look for in our favorites.

Relatibility endeared wrestlers like Bret Hart or Stone Cold to fans

Bret Hart had decent microphone skills, but he was a worker and fans appreciated his matches, even if Hitman was a better moniker than gimmick.

Stone Cold Steve Austin had fantastic microphone skills, a decent move set, but a completely relatable story. He was a redneck, who swigged beer and hated his boss.

Being relatable doesn’t make sense for every wrestler.

Sometimes the gimmick is almost as important for the fans as being relatable, as we’ve seen with the Undertaker specifically. Sometimes its just really good microphone skills that impress fans, much like the Rock, whose popularity skyrocketed after his heel turn due to his microphone skills.

After watching Over the Limit, it’s quite simple: Cena’s current gimmick is not relatable to fans and now its just downright stale.

Fans don't appreciate the undefeatable face anymore. It just doesn’t mesh with modern life.

Wrestling fans wake up, go to work, slug through work, then go home and crack open a drink to watch TV. The routine repeats the next day.

That’s why people root for wrestler's today: we relate to their characters as much as our own lives.

Much like the Hulk Rules era in the WWF, Hogan had many of the same superhuman characteristics of Cena, which too became stale and boring. Hogan just got away with it because the internet was not a factor back in the 80s and early 90s.

Which brings us to Cena’s recent title defense at Over the Limit, which was almost as big of a comeback as any of Hogan’s matches. The pay-per-view match was a disgusting display of unrelatability.

The fact that it took two guys to beat him senselessly, with various weapons, and then try to use a recording of him yelling, “I quit,” shows Vince McMahon and the WWE are still buying into SuperCena, while the fans are not.

Maybe the guys behind the scenes thought that by having Cena get beat senselessly by two guys and still win would maybe make fans pull for him by the end of the match. It was reminiscent of Stone Cold getting battered by the Bret "The Hitman" Hart at WresltemaniaXIIV, or Mankind getting wrecked in the infamous Hell in a Cell match at King of the Ring.

But, did fans honestly think that the Miz had a chance? Did anyone under the age of 13 honestly feel that Cena wouldn’t pull through in the end?

To be frank, this is the dilemma the WWE are in now.

The company has to replace John Cena’s gimmick with less relatable traits for the fans, if only to make it less predictable.

Am I saying to turn John Cena heel? Not necessarily, especially since the WWE is in desperate need of faces due to the recent injury of John Morrison and the retirement of Edge. 

I don’t think Cena at this juncture of his career absolutely needs to turn heel, but he needs to have an edge. Cena needs to lose once in a while, and maybe even get a little bit of heat from the fans every now and then.

He can keep selling his t-shirts and his spinner title belts, but it doesn’t mean anything if his character becomes completely stale.

Whether we as fans hate or enjoy Cena’s championship run, one thing is absolutely certain.

John Cena's character must change.

Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/709788-the-essence-of-a-face-why-john-cena-just-doesnt-cut-it

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