Quote:
Originally Posted by molson
How would you book Cena right now? Would you try to get him cheered v. Rock in Miami at Mania, and how would you go about that?
I do know a lot of people want Cena to turn heel, and I understand that, but the business he does with the casual/kid audience is enormous, I can also understand the hesitation with throwing that away.
We are not the fans that bring money to the company, we're not the fans that buy PPVs enough to make a difference (as proven by the MITB buyrate), and we are not the fans that buy merchandise. Superman Cean v. Umaga/Khali/Lashley (that "reign of terror" streak he went on on B-PPVs a few years back during his long title reign) did better buyrates the internet fan-dream PPV at MITB. But they're still pushing this Punk thing, at least to some degree, really just to placate the hardcore fans for bit....and then they won't buy the PPVs anyway. MITB would have drawn better if it were just Super-Cena v. some monster they built up...that's just the facts, that's what sells to the casual audience.....I don't envy the WWE's position, but at the very least, we continuously get great matches out of it no matter what they do (I was a fan when we got Mabel v. Kevin Nash main events, it's still unbelievable to me to see what we get on PPV and even free TV now). I mean, even Rock is very limited in-ring as was Austin post-neck break.
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It's a tough situation. I think the difference in his reign of terror stretch and now is that we're talking many years of the same exact thing. It's just gotten stale.
The problem for me isn't John Cena, it's that John Cena is really one of the only main eventers the company has outside of Orton. His title runs were fine because you still had HBK, HHH, Taker, Edge, Jericho and others on the card. You don't have that so people a PPV is really just $50 to watch one or two title matches.
While I think a Cena heel run would be incredibly entertaining, they don't have to do it to fix the problem. They need to re-build the midcard, need to re-build the tag division. Use these as feeders toward the main event scene instead of bringing in mercenaries from other promotions that no one has heard of and throwing them into the main event scene. Cena's babyface character is fine, you just need other options for people too. If you didn't like Cena in the past, you could tune in because you liked HBK. But now, if you don't like Cena or Orton, there really isn't a point to buying a PPV.