It’s John Cena, but why?

[Darkcrusader]

Why do people love John Cena that much? I mean I don't watch wrestling, the only time I've heared about him was from the prank call , a small podcast called Drunken Peasants and maybe that one time when I was younger and Hannah Montana was a thing ( ofc I didn't know who he was when I first saw him there O_O). But so far, he's been in vines, pranks, interviews and even his god damn theme song is somewhat catchy for some reason I can't explain. So why is he such a John Cena?

[Darkcrusader]

He has also been in a couple of movies, some bad ones like Fred 1,2 or that one movie where he's a wrestler ( yeah the plot thickens) , a good one that I can think of, the "Trainwreck", in Scooby Doo, Generator Rex, and not to mention commercials and shit.
But what makes him such a fucking icon?

[Forum Mafia GM]

Vine

[Darkcrusader]

Vine

[Brendan]

Memes

[DarknessB]

He has also been in a couple of movies, some bad ones like Fred 1,2 or that one movie where he's a wrestler ( yeah the plot thickens) , a good one that I can think of, the "Trainwreck", in Scooby Doo, Generator Rex, and not to mention commercials and shit.
But what makes him such a fucking icon?

Doesn't take a Doctor of Thugonomics to figure it out:

1) You can't see him.
2) His time is now.

[Darkcrusader]

@Brendan
But how can memes explain the existance of such a godly creature?

@DarknessB
If I can't see him, then how can I love him? There must be an explanation, wait, you can't see God, you can't Cena. John Cena is God, thanks for clarifying it m8.

[NoctiZ]

BRRRR RABADO

[DarknessB]

@Brendan
But how can memes explain the existance of such a godly creature?

@DarknessB
If I can't see him, then how can I love him? There must be an explanation, wait, you can't see God, you can't Cena. John Cena is God, thanks for clarifying it m8.

Awesome -- I'm glad you received the appropriate Attitude Adjustment on the topic.

[Helz]

I ask the same thing about the Kardashians. Bunch of retarded cows the whole lot of em.

[Cryptonic]

I ask the same thing about the Kardashians. Bunch of retarded cows the whole lot of em.

It's because people ask questions like this and make people think about them lmao
People just need to stop talking about them.

[Darkcrusader]

I ask the same thing about the Kardashians. Bunch of retarded cows the whole lot of em.

Yeah , that was because one of them had a sex tape that managed to get her, not only famous but gave her family their own show. Same could also be said about Honey Boo Boo but whatever, that got shut down because of the whole child molestation scandal.

Edit: It should be called the John Kardashena Effect.

[DarknessB]

Yeah , that was because one of them had a sex tape that managed to get her, not only famous but gave her family their own show. Same could also be said about Honey Boo Boo but whatever, that got shut down because of the whole child molestation scandal.

Edit: It should be called the John Kardashena Effect.

LOL, except that John Cena is an actual entertainer with a skill -- "professional wrestling", which is basically half athletic stunt work and half theater. In that universe, he's very good at what he does -- not the most technically gifted wrestler, but certainly someone with a lot of charisma. I liked him more when he was starting as opposed to the Hulk Hogan-like good guy, but so it goes. In any event, Cena didn't become famous based on a sex tape and he actually does a lot of nice stuff outside of wrestling such as his extensive work with Make a Wish. The Kardashians on the other hand...

[Darkcrusader]

LOL, except that John Cena is an actual entertainer with a skill -- "professional wrestling", which is basically half athletic stunt work and half theater. In that universe, he's very good at what he does -- not the most technically gifted wrestler, but certainly someone with a lot of charisma. I liked him more when he was starting as opposed to the Hulk Hogan-like good guy, but so it goes. In any event, Cena didn't become famous based on a sex tape and he actually does a lot of nice stuff outside of wrestling such as his extensive work with Make a Wish. The Kardashians on the other hand...

Fine, I will give you that John Cena does actually something to entertain people whilst actually working for it, going to the gym, even if he doesn't write his stuff and wrestling is scripted, I guess it's okay. But why John? That's the question, sure, a lot of the other wrestlers have had some TV ads, roles in some movies, Hulk Hogan for example ( again, I've seen him in movies whilst growing up and didn't know who he was) or André the Giant, etc. But there's something else about John and I can't explain why.
The Kardashians are strange though, I haven't seen any episode, I looked up some clips and I don't really get it. It might just be me because I don't like reality shows but whatever. Also I guess you could say it's the same as a boxing/ kick-boxing match, people come to see John as a sport as opposite of watching the Kardashians on tv, you were kinda right, it was unfair for me to compare John with them.

[DarknessB]

Cena is a larger than life "face" in wrestling terms, meaning good guy, if you're not familiar with wrestling terminology. He started off as a "heel" or somewhere in the middle, but since he became a good guy, he hasn't gone back to doing anything bad in the storylines for a number of years. This is extremely rare given how fast wrestling storylines change. Cena is far more the exception than the rule, in terms of cultivating an uncorruptible good guy image. He's sort of like Hulk Hogan before the nWo heel turn -- the one good guy that you can depend on.

Also, if you think about it, his character is pretty ridiculous -- a white wannabe gangster wrestler type who almost knows that his lyrics / persona have become goodie goodie now. It's a pretty interesting character to play in terms of wrestling history and a lot of the smarts wonder if / when he's eventually going to turn heel again.

Basically, Cena has kind of a ridiculous / funny persona and he's a long time good guy who doesn't want to become a bad guy again. He also has some ridiculous type moves as well that make for good memes (Five Knuckle Shuffle in particular). He's been at the top of the WWE for so long that he's crossed over into general celebrity, especially in terms of his charitable outreach to kids, who idolize him as a superhero type figure since he's always the good guy.

[DarknessB]

The Kardashians basically appeal to the types of Americans (mostly teenage to 30s women) who glamorize being famous. The show is basically a glimpse into their lives, but presumably is staged to a pretty high degree -- i.e. drama just happens to be going down right when the cameras are there. There's no real talent involved -- it's far more about the image / persona of being famous, wearing fancy clothes, associating with celebrities in Hollywood, etc. It's pretty much shallow materialism at its worst.

That's said, the TV stations love reality shows because they are dirt cheap to produce compared to scripted show which have far higher writing and actor costs.

In any event, Cena is trying to put on a show for wrestling fans and kids whereas the Kardashians are basically self-promoting and haven't provided anything to society of value (including entertainment).

[Darkcrusader]

Shit, you've said more than enough about Cena than I could even muster, but and here comes a big butt ( not a kardashian reference by the way), sure it's fair to say that wrestlers are, in a way, even if it's debatable athletes. Would you say he's at the same level with Mike Tyson? I mean not in term of popularity, but as two different people who also happen to be practicing or used to practice a sport, the question being about wrestling and boxing.
John Cena, let's say he's prominent figure in wrestling, just like how Tyson used to and still kinda is. I know you can't compare those two sports, just like how you're not able to compare boxing with kick-boxing but these two are basically huge images of what they're doing/ used to do.
Well if it comes to achievements, Mike has won many heavyweight titles starting at 20 years old, John also has won a couple of WWE championships, scripted or not. Also who would win in a fight, both at their primes, in a wrestling ring, Mike going by the boxing rules, John by the wrestling ones?

[DarknessB]

Shit, you've said more than enough about Cena than I could even muster, but and here comes a big butt ( not a kardashian reference by the way), sure it's fair to say that wrestlers are, in a way, even if it's debatable athletes. Would you say he's at the same level with Mike Tyson? I mean not in term of popularity, but as two different people who also happen to be practicing or used to practice a sport, the question being about wrestling and boxing.
John Cena, let's say he's prominent figure in wrestling, just like how Tyson used to and still kinda is. I know you can't compare those two sports, just like how you're not able to compare boxing with kick-boxing but these two are basically huge images of what they're doing/ used to do.
Well if it comes to achievements, Mike has won many heavyweight titles starting at 20 years old, John also has won a couple of WWE championships, scripted or not. Also who would win in a fight, both at their primes, in a wrestling ring, Mike going by the boxing rules, John by the wrestling ones?

Here's the thing -- I totally get that wrestling is "sports entertainment". The outcomes are preplanned as are the storylines. That said, they're definitely athletes, but they're athletes putting on a theatrical-type show as opposed to a legitimate competition with each other. If anything, the competition side of it is capturing the hearts and minds of the viewers. Charisma is literally the more important thing in pro wrestling -- you need to be able to put butts in seats and sell merchandise through your character's gimmick, interviews, and in-ring performance. If you're boring or the audience doesn't care about you (didn't say: like you -- being hated is good too, you just need to get a strong reaction of some sort), then you won't last. From a purely technical wrestling standpoint, Hulk Hogan was garbage -- his set of moves was very limited, he wasn't agile in the ring, etc. It was all marketing and the charisma he brought to interviews. Comparatively, someone like Bret Hart was an absolute ring technician, but didn't have the charisma of a Hogan, so he was overshadowed for a while.

As you point out, pro wrestling is a very different skillset than say boxing for that reason so it's tough to compare Mike Tyson and John Cena. The former was competing strictly on athleticism whereas the latter is more like a high impact actor with a risk of injury due to performance. If we had to compare them, I'd say that Cena is close to, but not quite at Tyson's level (at peak). Tyson was out of this world dominant before his Buster Douglas loss. A better wrestling comparison to Mike Tyson would be Hulk Hogan in the 80s, Stone Cold Steve Austin in the late 90s / early 2000s, or the Rock in the early 2000s. The wrestling purists consider Cena very good, but a bit played out in terms of his squeaky clean image (in fact, he doesn't want to go heel because of the good stuff he does for kids), comparatively limited number of moves (Cena is a perfectly fine technician in the ring, but he's far from top tier), etc.

In my opinion, Cena could take himself to the next level by turning heel again. It's a bit difficult to remember, but Cena started off as a tweener (in between) / heel type, and he was actually quite entertaining in terms of the trash talking / freestyle raps against his opponent. He became more one dimensional when he turned face and because of all of his positive work (Make a Wish, etc.), he's sort of been stuck in that mold. There's just not as much you can do as a pure good guy vs. someone who is at least anti-authority like Stone Cold or the Rock. Hogan turning heel in the 90s and ushering in the nWo era was the big second act of his career, and revived him for many years. Everyone was sick of the good guy, but when he went heel, the crowds went nuts and those were some of the most popular times wrestling has had.

If we're talking a fight fight, Tyson would probably win. There are pro wrestlers with legitimate fighting backgrounds, both past and present, but I'm pretty sure that Cena isn't one of them. If we're talking like Ken Shamrock or Brock Lesnar, then I'd take the wrestler for sure, because those guys have MMA-type experience. In fact, there was a non-staged cross boxing / wrestling set of matches that WWE had in the late 90s (to be fair, more boxing than wrestling). Regardless, the wrestlers got destroyed by the boxers for the most part. It's very different when your specialty is choreographing moves with your opponent vs. having to struggle to fight extemporaneously.

[Stealthbomber16]

something contributory

[DarknessB]

something contributory

[Stealthbomber16]

Thats genius.

[powerofdeath]

Miley whats good?

[DarknessB]

Miley whats good?

POD, we're all in this forum. We all do posts and we all know how they manipulate. POD, congratulations.