Why John Cena's Continued Baby Face Run Is an Insult to WWE Fans

I don’t dislike John Cena. 

I have a ton of respect for everything that the man does inside and outside of the ring, and though I’ve criticized him often, I’ve defended him on a number of occasions as well. 

That being said, my annoyance with his current baby face run has reached an all-time high. 

And, no, I don’t blame John Cena. I blame the WWE. 

His character may help him sell a lot of merchandise, it may help make the WWE a ton of money and it may look good for the company during the PG era. But it is a complete insult to any fan who watches wrestling and knows that it's scripted. 

Why? Because it’s not believable. 

When you’re eight years old and you still believe that Santa Claus delivers Christmas presents to six billion people in one night, you do so because you don’t know any better. Your mind is not fully developed, and you find it completely feasible that one man rides a magic sleigh driven by flying reindeer and travels hundreds of thousands of miles in a 10-hour span. 

And if you believe that, you can also believe that it takes four people to beat Cena (like it did at Vengeance) or that Cena can get his a** beat for 10 minutes and then miraculously come back to win his match with a couple of shoulder blocks and an Attitude Adjustment. 

But when you’re 23 years old, you don’t believe that there’s really a guy who wears a big red suit and lives in the North Pole. You realize that there’s no possible way that one person could do the things he supposedly does all in one night. 

Why? Because it’s not believable. 

There is no Santa Claus, there is no list of all the kids that are good and bad, and there’s no red-nosed reindeer named Rudolph. 

There’s also no one on this planet who has charisma, wears bright colors and preaches about “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect,” and as a result, is the most unstoppable person on God’s green earth. 

Except for John Cena. 

Forget The Boogeyman, The Gobbledy Gooker or The Shockmaster. Cena is one of the least believable characters in WWE history. 

Guys like the ones I mentioned may have had ridiculous gimmicks, but at least they made me suspend my disbelief. They lost because one man beat them up enough to pin them, they had to work their way toward title shots and they didn’t completely no-sell their storyline injuries. 

Other than the rare occasion, Cena does none of those things. 

He doesn’t lose because some guy beat the holy hell out of him and then pinned him clean for the one-two-three, he doesn’t start at the back of the line when he wants a WWE title shot, and he shows up on Monday Night Raw looking like he spent the day at a spa less than 24 hours after he was in a brutal match. 

And I freaking hate it. 

Why? Because it’s not believable. 

You may have noticed a trend here, and it’s that almost nothing Cena does is believable. 

Sure, he shows some great emotion in his promos. But he also is portrayed as this unstoppable superhuman who can overcome any and all obstacles in his path.

That’s fine for comic books, but not for professional wrestling. 

When older, smarter fans watch Monday Night Raw, we realize that we are watching is scripted—not fake, but scripted. But we also realize that the main goal of each wrestler performing on the show is to make us forget it’s scripted and think—if only for a split second—that professional wrestling is a legitimate sport. 

Cena hasn’t done that since around 2005. 

When we watch him on TV, we know that we’re watching something that’s scripted. We can tell it’s “fake” when Cena gets destroyed in a Hell in a Cell match on Sunday and then sprints to the ring on Monday without showing so much as one grimace. 

Like I said, though, I do not blame Cena for all this B.S. we’ve put up with for the last several years. 

Cena is in a position where he’s essentially Vince McMahon’s personal puppet. He wears those bright colors, he acts like “Super Cena” and he sucks up to the fans because it’s what Vince wants him to do. 

But it’s not believable. 

If you think even for a second that Cena is this honorable holier-than-thou that he plays on TV in real life, then you are sadly mistaken. Go backstage and eavesdrop on him before Raw goes on the air, and I’m sure he’s not preaching to the other wrestlers about hustle, loyalty and respect. 

Why? Because no one does that in real life.

So, the fact that the WWE forces Cena down our throats and expects us to suspend our disbelief every time he’s on the air doesn’t mean that we’re going to. 

We will do so when and only when what we see on TV comes across as real, and very little of what Cena has done over the last five or six years has done that. 

But I really don’t blame Cena for just doing his job. 

I blame Vince—or whoever the hell it is in the WWE that has made Cena’s character what it is—for portraying Cena in such a ridiculous way. 

It’s an insult to anyone that can tell the difference between something that’s fake and something that’s real.