WWE: John Cena's Raw Promo Was the Best of His Career

John Cena is usually the PG era’s poster child, a corny and campy WWE spokesman who makes unfunny poop jokes and generally fails in his attempts at comedy. 

That’s the Cena I hate. That’s the Cena a lot of people hate. 

Cena’s goofy promos come across as rehearsed and unrealistic, and instead of fans getting into them, they drowned him in boos despite the fact that he’s the top baby face in the WWE. That’s not how it's supposed to be.

He’s supposed to be showered with cheers, not drowned with boos. 

More often than not, though, Cena gets the reception of a heel because we’re tired of him calling Sheamus “a human jar of mayonnaise.” Every once in a while, however, Cena stops with his not-so-funny comedy and delivers a gem that turns those boos back into cheers.

That’s what he did on last week’s episode of Monday Night Raw. 

For the first time since I can remember, Cena didn’t grab a mic and try to be a stand-up comic. Instead, what he did was the same thing that made CM Punk the star of 2011: he cut a worked shoot. 

It was a far cry from the weak comedy we usually get from Cena. He spoke from the heart, he meant what he said and we could see that in his facial expressions, his mannerisms, the tone of his voice, everything. 

Cena was able to rip The Rock apart in epic fashion and as someone who was firmly behind The Rock before this promo, I’m now considering a switch from Team Bring it to the Cenation.

Why? Because this was a rare occasion when Cena wasn’t being a corporate yes man who toes the company line and does exactly what Vince McMahon wants him to do. 

This was Cena being the Cena that helped get him over at the beginning of his career in the first place. This was Cena with an edge. This was the Cena we’ve been begging to see since 2006. 

And it worked because everything that Cena said was something that he truly felt. 

You think Cena really thinks Sheamus looks like a “human jar of mayonnaise?” Hell no, but the WWE writers probably thought that was a cute and clever little insult. 

On the other hand, do you think Cena meant what he said last Monday night? Lines like this: “This is the part where I’m supposed to say I look forward to WrestleMania because I personally respect The Rock. I don’t.” 

Or this: “I always showed up, and I never left.” 

And this: “Finally The Rock has come home, and he’s never gonna leave again. And then he left…again.” 

You’re damn right that, like Punk over the summer, Cena wasn’t spewing lines written word-for-word for him by some writing staff. He was given a general guideline of what to say and then he went out there and delivered the best promo of his career, one that thrived on genuine emotion rather than some sort of storyline beef. 

And, again like Punk was able to do last year, Cena proved that the best storylines in wrestling are often derived from real-life feelings. I don’t think there’s anyone who could sit here and say that Cena’s promo would have been nearly as effective if he didn’t believe what he was saying. 

But he did, and what resulted was Cena doing what fans have been begging to see him do for years: Drop the cookie cutter character and show that he still has an edge. 

That’s exactly what he did. And it didn’t even take a heel turn to do it.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.