Was this era really that bad?
>>16761248Yes.
>>16761248Yes. Just about every match with Cena is him being worn down and popping up at the end with the five moves of doom. If you're lucky, he may hit a bulldog, a legdrop off the top rope or the worst STF and fisherman's suplex you've ever seen before. If it's the main event of a PPV, he usually has finisher/false finish spam to create the false impression of a good match.
>>16761248Yes, this caused my first exodus from wrestling. The second was when Rey Mysterio won the world HEAVYWEIGHT title
Wow, look, another Smarks don't understand wrestling gimmick thread. Never give up you guys
Yes it literally ruined wrestling coolness
>>16761289Oh, I get the gimmick. It got me to stop watching or caring for years
>>16761289Based. These obese fucking faggots really think they're any different from AEWtrannies. Look at the fat fucking virgin fucks threatening to "riot" if Cena won. Same "people" who rape children and attend Dynamite these days.
>>16761248People say wrestling died with HHH in 2002, but hell no. It died in 2007 when Benoit offed himself and they went ham down on the PG shit. Cena was the face of that era, and he was so fucking squeaky clean, it was repulsive. People droned out in waves and felt alienated to all hell. Fuck you Vince, you sellout cocksucker
PG Era was great
2005-2009? No. He was a main event machine and keep the ship afloat. Bad writing and dumb concepts like MITB failed to make new stars.2010-2013 he was pretty bad. But this is also when the neckbeards and boomer part timers arrived which was way worse.
roman wins lol
>>16761248Feeding everyone to Super Cena for half a decade is how they ended up with Lord Tensai in the main event.
>>167612482010 to 2016 was bad.
>>16761248
>>16761330Fuck vanilla midget Benoit. He's the reason they scrapped the blood and chair shots and steroids and everything else that made it cool. Got the Mr Kennedy storyline dropped too. It was very much TV14 before that weekend.
>>16761357Main Event Machine? Cena was already getting booed even before 2010. They had to force Kurt Angle to team up with Daivari, make him say some based things, talk shit about the crowd and they still loved him over Cena.
>>16761273Fine speech
>>16761248yes. anyone defending super cena shit is an idiot or was just a child that grew up with it and knows no better. it made the product magnitudes worse.
>>16761248Yes. The WWE was forced to create Roman Reigns because they didn't build up any faces during the time when he was at his peak. Inbetween his run in 2009 to about 2014 (the time when he stopped winning world titles regularly) there were only 3 faces who won the WWE Championship other than him. Rey Mysterio (who lost it the same night), CM Punk (who turned heel midway through his reign) and Daniel Bryan. Cena won almost every feud except for VS CM Punk in the Summer of Punk, Brock Lesnar, Daniel Bryan for his Summerslam match, and Randy Orton when he unified the world titles.
>>16761248It made me leave for 20 years so yeah. Still catching up on what all my old favorites did up until retirement but I’m getting there.
Honestly blame Benoit. When he came back after 2014 he tried to put over as many people as possible and it did meant a lot at first because of how dominant he was booked. Cena US open challenge was based as fuck.
>>16761357>neckbeardsWait what? What made them arrive?
>>16761248For all the people complaining, who the fuck could've been the top guy at the time of Super Cena (2009-2010)? People like HHH and Taker were becoming part-timers, Jericho was becoming dimeless, and no one cared about Edge anymore. All you realistically had were Cena and Orton
i'm of two minds. i don't mind him being an unbeatable babyface because wwe was really struggling to build anyone at that time and the pg era was mega dimeless. i do mind his never give up gimmick though, because it literally rewired peoples brains into thinking babyfaces should never tap out
>>16761761One has to wonder how many new guys Vince could have built if he wasn't turbofocused on pushing Cena above everybody else
>>16761248Afraid so>>16761268Fpbp
>>16761846The issue was that even when he put over guys in a match like Owens or Styles, he'd still end up winning the feud. The underdog surprisingly getting the first win only does so much
>>16761985Tell Vince to make better choices. He decided that Sheamus and ADR were gonna be top guys, and forced his way into creating the most bland top 4 in the history of the company. And that blandness directly led to Punk's pipebomb resonating.
>>16761248They literally managed to run off half of the audience if not more and still haven't recovered to where they were, despite scamming media organizations into huge rights fees
>>16761874TNA and ROH going to shit. Rise of social media. Started hijacking shows until their nerd darlings won the belt. And ratings tanked.
>>16762698ROH shitters coming to WWE tanked ratings
I'm gonna miss Cena, guys...
Recc me a kino Cena match pls
>>16763025https://youtu.be/MLylfh3atzACena vs. Styles. Both of their matches are classics, but their Royal Rumble 2017 match is where he wins the title.
For most guys of his era he was their best match. The undercard was just dog shit. It's hard to sit through a show when only one guy knows what he's doing.
>>16763112Cena worked the same fucking match for like ten years as if he were Hogan with 1/4 of the charisma. And even Hogan got stale enough to warrant a heel turn at some point.
>>16763261Please tell me a wrestler who works multiple kinds of matches and go into detail on how they are different.
>>16763112Like who? He may have been their most important match, but that's not the same as best
>>16763377Khali, Umaga, Daniel Bryan, Edge, Batista, RVD, Rey.
>>16763456I disagree with at least half the list. Edge is only true if we're just talking about singles matches
Yes. It was probably worse than most people will say. I completely stopped watching wrestling regularly because of this era. Absolutely unwatchable slop. And I was a Cena mark when he first won the title. I legit got sick of him like a year after he buried everyone with the same match. Cena is a dogshit face. Cena is great at being a dickhead. He got over as a heel and failed as a face. People got sick of his shit and booed the fuck out of him almost every time he came out. People stopping tuning in. They begged for a heel turn. He never switched it up. After coming back to wrestling forums like this place it's shocking to me how many people think Cena is the GOAT or whatever. He was fucking trash and most smarks despised him back then besides the contrarians.
>>16762468God those 2 are awful. I can't believe I actually sat through their feud. Shit lasted months.
>>16761248>You now remember Nexus
>>16761248I started watching in the late 2000s and everyone already hated cena but I didn’t get it desu. There were 2 world championships and orton beat cena multiple times
>>16761248>Was this era really that bad?Yes. Cena drove away millions of viewers and that's no exaggeration.
>>16761248Unwatchable.
>>16761357this, after WrestleMania 26 was when the product really started to tank, their was things about it that were shit beforehand but it was still overall a watchable product until mid 2010
>>16762688this, the whole Daniel Bryan bullshit was way worse then anything Cena did in the late 2000s, overall 2010s were the worst overall decade in WWE history, it seemed like it had a chance to recover in 2015 but Vince was too far in mentally at that point, and it became a breeding ground for neckbeards and whining
>>16763456lol
>>16763696You can disagree all you won’t. Just like everything else in your life you’re wrong.
The big problem was that they didn't put him up against a bunch of clear heels like Khali. They put him against people like Angle, Jericho and Christian who the fans liked. And not only did Cena beat them, but he did it in the most predictable and corniest fashion each time.
>>16761289>smarksIt wasn't only smarks that hated Cena it was normal people too(smarks just hated him first). That's why casuals left in droves during the CENAWINSLOL era.
>>16761248it was if you want gritty and hardcore, but Cena run was about money and especially money flying out of retarded kids pockets to see their hero win every single time..
>>16761761He literally destroyed Lesnar mystique when he returned and Haitch buried it completely.Lesnar breaking the streak was to make him credible again. Getting squashed also made Lesnar start his lazy Suplex gimmick.
>>16765290He was literally the only thing holding any viewers attention. You man child boomers don’t understand what ran off casuals was the attitude era. To them wrestling was that show where old ladies give birth to hands and they choppy choppy the peepee. They stopped watching cause they grew up and where embarrassed they had watched Al snow eat a dog.
>>16765345Lesnar only benefited from the extreme rules match cause it created the perception that he was going to continue to have good matches. But it was yet another Tom Mcgee style carry job by Cena.
>>16761248Even worse. It was Vince chasing Rock 'N Wrestling Hulkamania through a post-Attitude Era lense to make a TV-PG product that appealed to only the least discerning viewers. It was so bad that I started buying ROH DVDs at this time.
>>16765668Lesnar never benefitted from that match.Dude came back after 8 years, after doing Japan stuff and UFC and jobbing straight to Cena.
>>16765719Yeah and he looked great doing it. After that he’s been nothing but dog shit. Thank you Cena.
>>16765746Because his mystique was gone. He was cold. Nobody cared about Lesnar after he jobbed to Cena.Then there was the feud with Triple H and it was only memorable because Haitch failed to get sympathy from the crowd during Summerslam and he proceeded to beat him at WM afterwards.
>>16761289I still have that green Cena shirt
>>16761248the wwe in the late 2000's and early 2010's was a rather grim time for the midcard, the top sopts was somewhat good enough for people to stick around, but look at the midcard field there was practically nobody good enough to main event, and we dimeless shitters like sheamus, del rio, and rybitch getting fucking pushes that obviously didnt work out its why people really liked the shield, for the first time in years, a new and fresh trio of wrestlers instantly looked like believable main eventers that quickly got over with the fans
>>16761280Same
>>16766199>Dean Ambrose>A believable main eventer
>>16765695wrestling fig status?
>>16761248Yeah, but it wasn't Cena's fault. The show just became really stupid and dull in general. Not only that, but it clearly signaled that the company turned a deaf ear to what people really wanted. The lively and colorful larger than life characters turned into something you'd find in LazyTown, so of course you had droves of people running away from it to watch something like the UFC. It was neither (intentionally) funny nor engaging. You had some occasional bright spots here and there, such as Jeff Hardy's monumental babyface run, or Jericho's WHC run, but overall you had no reason to bother with what was on your screen, because you already knew that it was eventually going nowhere. They also made it very clear that they had drawn artificial lines around Cena as the #1 guy and the main focus of the show, which stifled everybody else.However I will still defend Festus. He was great.
>>16765651>smark trying to pretend like the Attitude Era ran off casuals when the casuals loved the Attitude Era specifically and stopped watching because it endedkek
>>16766668>bright spots here and there, such as Jeff Hardy's monumental babyface runPeople mention Benoit as the worst thing but in terms of the on screen product i think Jeff and to a lesser extent RVD crashing out of the main event cause of drugs did a shitload of damage to the product. Those were two big 2nd tier babyfaces that were gone and could've stuck around during that time who could've split up some of the Cena screentime to not make him as stale. But i think after those two bombed out i dont think Vince ever really trusted guys to take the ball from Cena till he became obsessed with Roman.
>>16765651>The ratings fell to hell>It-it would have been worse without him!!!!1!No, Cena and Roman both are what killed the ratings, don't come to me with some headcanon about them barely saving the company, the fact is that they tanked the viewership by being boring shitters. People came back up during last mania because Roman finally lost and fucked off, but they did nothing with the burst and now Cena is gonna tank the ratings again.
>>16766558remember that back in the mid 2010's he got massive reactions from the crowd just by being really funny and got a massive pop when he cash his MITB to win his 1st world title, people genuinely saw him as someone who's not the face of the promotion but someone who could be in the main event scene from time to time
>>16766696>>16766736You both are experiencing arrested development. This level of denial is why all of your peers have families and don't watch wrestling and why live with your parents and have never touched a woman, all because the great John Cena worked you into a seethe.
>>16766734That's a very good point. Those two, along with Orton's instability, and Rock (and eventually Batista) leaving for Hollywood, probably further enabled Vince's fixation on Cena and Roman as the end-all be-all of the shows, because he couldn't trust anybody else with that top spot.Jeff's popularity back then really cannot be overstated.
>>16766808You have run out of arguments and you are resorting to create a strawman and attacking it personally because you know you are wrong. Now please kill yourself you waste of oxigen.
>>16766820And then Cena left for Hollywood and Roman demanded to get overpaid to work only 4 days a year lmao
>>16761248It was worse than whatever you've read because children during that era are now young adults applying rose-tinted glasses to their memories due to misplaced nostalgia.I will admit that the blame wasn't solely on Cena, he was simply the poster child of a mediocre era. He was cranking out formulaic and dull main events routinely but there wasn't exactly a deep bench to back him up with. The undercard and midcard were somehow worse than his corny ass. Just piles upon piles of dimeless wastes of space. Remember Chuck Palumbo's biker gimmick in 2008?? Remember Tatanka coming out of retirement in 2005?! Del Rio is a 4x World Champion! For years fans named Dolph Ziggler as the cream of the crop! That's a desperate roster...
>>16766873i'd be very curious to see cena return to a booking position in wwe. he is (or was) autistic enough to produce something interesting, and a china backing could lead to the same kind of oddities we used to see on those early saudi shows.
>>16766782DEAN was always popular during his time in WWE, despite all the memes around here.
>>16761248Hogan wins eraGolden EraCena wins eraReigns wins era
>>16765131Such a stupid statement. Daniel Bryan got over tremendously, and the fans wanted him to win. That's worse than Cena getting booed the fuck out of the building, driving away millions of viewers, and being booked like superman when everyone could easily see the ending of every match coming? You are such a retarded anti-smark it's incredible.
>>16768402And for the old folk Bruno wins lol era
>>16765793A better wrestler could have turned that around. Good thing they didn’t risk their top draw on giving a shitter like Brock a big win.
>>16761516thanks bro
>>16768626>Forgetting about Bob
