Wrestling Culture Episode 60

[puropotsy]

On Episode 60 of The Wrestling Culture podcast, Dylan Hales and I discuss the awesome career of John Cena and his status as all-time great in wrestling.

 

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=112658&cmd=tc

[Zoo Enthusiast]

This zooms to the top of my list!

[Exposer]

Great show. Lol at Dylan attempting to big boy me via online internet podcast.

 

Anyways, this felt like a show that could have gone on two more hours. There's a lot to talk about with Cena. Too bad Dave's bladder got the best of him.

[Grimmas]

Holy shit, why didn't you tell me Dave. I'm so pumped.

[bradhindsight]

And up on PTBN:

 

http://placetobenation.com/wrestling-culture-podcast-60-john-cena/

[Jesse Ewiak]

Posted a link to this over on Reddit. Wonder if anybody will listen, or it'll be a bunch of people pissed you guys would dare say Cena is an all time great.

[kjh]

WWE definitely cooled off on John Cena quickly after he debuted. He went from rubbing shoulders with the top stars on Smackdown in July 2002 to being just a guy on the card two months later. Even when he got the rapper gimmick he didn't get a big push straight away. Looking at the results of the time period, they didn't seem to get high on Cena again until shortly before WM 19 in 2003.

[elliott]

Just started this and I'm laughing my ass off. Dylan it is very probable that you sold me cigarettes 20ish years ago.

[The Chief]

This was great and I'm pointing all blind Cena haters towards this.

 

One thing I want to bring up is Cena at WM19. They actually had huge plans for him, I wouldn't say he was left of the card. He was supposed to battle rap either Fabulous or Jay Z, which in 2003 would have been huge. I think they backed out at the last minute which led to Cena doing a rap on a cardboard cutout on Heat before the PPV. Kind of reinforces your theory that they had always had plans for Cena.

[ZThomas]

This got me to watch his match vs Orton at summerSlam '07 this was the hieght of my Orton fandom which died down when they had him form legacy. they did a great job building Orton up in '07 that it was such a fresh match to have him and Cena one on one. Orton was the only person maybe besides Bastista that was made to seem as somewhat equal to Cena. HHH ruined Orton for me personally, he even injured him once.

[SteveJRogers]

I'm going to listen when I get a chance, but how much did the whole idea that Cena "buries" younger talent get brought up?

I've seen it a lot lately in IWC "smarks" communities, but the only example of Cena being "political" was dictating the finish to SummerSlam 2010, and that was probably more of a case of not knowing any better than deliberately keeping the Nexus below him (even if Barrett never forgave him for that, and still holds a grudge (allegedly as he has said he hates him in an article, and it was brought up in an Answers.com piece on Cena haters among his peers, though it read very markish and didn't seem very researched)).

 

Seems that its more Cena playing the company guy, not stepping on creative's toes (he has done jobs) as opposed to the political machinations of so many others have done. In other words, smarks would have heard by now some grumblings, rumors and innuendos if Cena was doing things a Triple H or Shawn Michaels would do, or on the verge of pulling an Austin walk out if what creative gave him made little sense.

[SteveJRogers]

WWE definitely cooled off on John Cena quickly after he debuted. He went from rubbing shoulders with the top stars on Smackdown in July 2002 to being just a guy on the card two months later. Even when he got the rapper gimmick he didn't get a big push straight away. Looking at the results of the time period, they didn't seem to get high on Cena again until shortly before WM 19 in 2003.

 

Considering IWC reactions, and yeah sometimes people here get nutso over stuff like this, to when someone's push gets stalled, or shunted in favor of the latest flavor of the month, I wonder if Cena would have gotten such a chance 10 years later.

[Jimmy Redman]

As a love letter to John Cena this was amazing and I loved it.

 

Tiny things that the nerd in me wanted to clarify:

 

- Cena vs Undertaker was Vengeance 2003

 

- The Benoit thing you were thinking of was the Paul Heyman "wash your mouth out with soap" deal. Cena beat Rhyno and so Heyman (as the loser by proxy) had to get his mouth washed out. He tried to run so Benoit caught him and put him in the Sharpshooter while Cena literally shoved bars of soap in his mouth to close SD. Fun times.

 

This was January 2004, just before Benoit won the Rumble and jumped. He and Cena were both kind of feuding with Heyman at the time. There was this deal, then Heyman made them qualify for the Rumble, putting Benoit #1 and so on. But they were both right there at the time and were semi-buddies as the top faces.

 

- On 2007, I feel like they were gearing up for Orton to win the belt by the end of their feud, probably actually at No Mercy in the scheduled LMS before Cena went down. I'm pretty sure that it was reported at the time that Orton was getting the belt. Take that for what it's worth.

 

From there, I wonder if Cena gets it straight back like they did with Edge, or Orton defends against the Shawns and Jerichos for a while (like in reality) and maybe Cena wins the Rumble anyway, and they do Cena regaining against Orton at WM24. Maybe Hunter wins the Rumble and Cena does something else for Mania. 2008 was still a time where there was more than just Cena as a credible headliner, so it's conceivable that he may not have been in the title match per se. Maybe he works against a Batista or something since Batista ended up doing nothing important. But they also hadn't done Cena winning the title back at Mania yet, he'd only defended it in 2006 and 07, so they may have gone down that road.