Bret Hart vs John Cena

[EnviousStupid]

Recently the topic of Bret/Cena came up in a discord server I'm active in, and I was surprised to find that there hadn't been a forum made here about it before. Two of the best aces in WWF/E history, for wholly different reasons. Peaks and longevity vs. execution and consistency? Where one has an unmatched volume of big matches available, the other went above and beyond with limited opposition and opportunity.

[EnviousStupid]

I also feel obliged to share this video, where Dylan Hales brings up John Cena in the context of an ace figure and compares his run to that of Bret Hart, despite the four pillars in the title. 

 

[Reel]

I recently finished my GWWE ballot for PTBN. I had Cena ten spots higher than Bret. I love Bret, I grew up in the middle of his WWF Champion run, in a lot of ways Bret is the idealized version of a great wrestler that I grew up on, but Cena just has so much more good stuff over a longer period of time. I love Bret's two year run from Survivor Series 95 to 97, but everything before and after that is not this stellar all-time run, most of it is just kind of good. Stack that up against Cena's decade on top working good matches with literally everybody, and there are clunkers in there and times where the booking did him no favors, but there is just so much more.

[Big Pete]

What's the fabled Jericho RAW match Dylan talked about on the pod?

[El McKell]

3 hours ago, Big Pete said:

What's the fabled Jericho RAW match Dylan talked about on the pod?

It's this: 

 

[NintendoLogic]

Cena was better at power spots and was probably a better bleeder, but I can't think of anything else he did in the ring better than Bret.

[Ma Stump Puller]

11 hours ago, Reel said:

I recently finished my GWWE ballot for PTBN. I had Cena ten spots higher than Bret. I love Bret, I grew up in the middle of his WWF Champion run, in a lot of ways Bret is the idealized version of a great wrestler that I grew up on, but Cena just has so much more good stuff over a longer period of time. I love Bret's two year run from Survivor Series 95 to 97, but everything before and after that is not this stellar all-time run, most of it is just kind of good. Stack that up against Cena's decade on top working good matches with literally everybody, and there are clunkers in there and times where the booking did him no favors, but there is just so much more.

I definitely think Bret's case is hurt by how little he has to work with in comparison with Cena, who practically had a boatload of talented acts to work with (with the occasional carry-job like with Khali or old-man Kane) on big stages and feuds as opposed to Bret who still obviously had good work, but his range of guys who didn't need a overt carry was much smaller and of course post-WWF Bret wasn't always in the mood to actually go. 

 

 

[Reel]

7 hours ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

I definitely think Bret's case is hurt by how little he has to work with in comparison with Cena, who practically had a boatload of talented acts to work with (with the occasional carry-job like with Khali or old-man Kane) on big stages and feuds as opposed to Bret who still obviously had good work, but his range of guys who didn't need a overt carry was much smaller and of course post-WWF Bret wasn't always in the mood to actually go. 

 

I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, and there will be guys on my list who don't have 'the matches' but are very good at the, to steal a phrase, 'input' side of wrestling. But in my mind, there are two points I keep coming back to when it comes to this sort of thing. 

1)This is mentioned in the podcast that is clipped above, but I think its a salient point; what happened is what happened. So maybe if Bret's era's average wrester was as good as Cena's, Bret would have a better case, but it wasn't and he doesn't. 

2) I'm not really interested in handicapping for quality of competition. Is there anybody out there knocking the four pillars because they got to wrestle each other all the time? I don't think so, if they are I haven't seen it. So maybe Bret would have this great resume if he got to wrestle Steve Austin, Vader, and Shawn in massive main events twice a year for a decade, but he didn't. If you want to say Bret was an 'input' All-Star and rank him over Cena, that's fine, but at some point you have to recon with the output disparity there. 

[Thrifty]

I would view it as Bret as the better "wrestler" but Cena having the better career and longer highlight reel. Don't begrudge anyone for preferring Bret even if his actual career feels more like a "could've been". It's like how, in hip-hop, Biggie is generally picked over Jay-Z by consensus even with a huge disparity in output between the two. Personally I tend to be more drawn to the wrestlers who peak really highly even if they burn out quickly or lose the spark than the "consistently very good but never outlier great" wrestlers (not that Cena counts as the latter, his peak is awesome and understandable if it was preferred to Bret's).

[CurtainJerker]

Peaks: Cena had 3 years where an argument could be made he was #1 in the world, Bret had 2. Cena was pushed as The Man in WWE longer.

Longevity: Hart had 1500+ more matches than Cena, believe it or not. Both have had at least one match in 25 different years.

Execution: Of course, Bret. Cena could be sloppy and not crisp.

Consistency: Hart, although the revelations of him mailing it in at house shows hurts him. Cena started off bad and improved every year, and eventually became a modern spot monkey during the U.S. Open Challenge.

Volume of big matches available: Cena.

Went above and beyond with limited opposition and opportunity: Yes, Bret was the King of the Dark Ages.

If I was a booker I'd go with Hart to have a better quality match, Meltzer's star ratings be damned. 

[Embrodak]

Cena was obviously a better “Top Guy”, but Bret is very obviously the better wrestler and performer. He didn’t have Cena’s gift of gab, but his promos have actually aged much better and are a lot more credible than most of Cena’s.

[Boss Rock]

Tough one, ultimately went with Bret. Both guys have undeniable peaks, but personally I think they both have thin great match lists. There's a lot of Cena matches that I don't think have aged super well and Bret had a thinner roster than Cena to work with. But Bret definitely has him beat in terms of selling and execution.

[EnviousStupid]

I have to concur with the Great Bretans. There's a case for Cena excelling more on the biggest stage/s or in front of partisan crowds, but the consistency of Bret in different roles on different stages is more persuasive for me. 

[Kain]

Bret.

I've never connected to Cena at all. He's basically a toilet break for me. Metaphorically speaking, I never did that. At the same time I never got the "you can't wrestle" or "same old shit" he got. I remember the Match vs. RVD when he did that Legdrop-Thing from the top on the opponent that was about to stand up which was a somewhat new move in his Arsenal at the time and they changed "same old shit". Never got that. That Match is also the only one I can think of that I would re-visit. Other than that I don't ever need to see another Match by Cena ever again in my life, to be honest.

[Mantaur Rodeo Clown]

2 hours ago, Kain said:

Bret.

I've never connected to Cena at all. He's basically a toilet break for me. Metaphorically speaking, I never did that. At the same time I never got the "you can't wrestle" or "same old shit" he got. I remember the Match vs. RVD when he did that Legdrop-Thing from the top on the opponent that was about to stand up which was a somewhat new move in his Arsenal at the time and they changed "same old shit". Never got that. That Match is also the only one I can think of that I would re-visit. Other than that I don't ever need to see another Match by Cena ever again in my life, to be honest.

Yes. Cena is tremendously overrated, both in casual circles but also strangely on this site. I assume people were just 9 years old during his peak. 

Bret was a main event talent from 1992-1999. Seven years.

Cena was a main event talent from 2005 to, well, 2025. Twenty years.

Despite Bret inheriting a smaller business, working with much worse talent, having much less of a push, and competing against much stiffer competition, he managed to create many more memorable moments and better matches. I don’t even think their promos are that far apart. Cena’s success was simply a war of attrition against the fans, and the sinking ratings and popularity of wrestling while he was on top reflected that. 

[Kain]

I honestly don't know if he's overrated. Certainly not because I don't care much for him, but maybe so. Perhaps it's a reaction of him being underrated in other regards. Which he is as he's not half as bad as you'd think given some of the reactions he's got over the years.