Chimera Star Junction

Well, my wrestling fan brothers and sisters, did you see Raw last night?  Oh, you didn’t?  You missed a good one.  I know, the whole Raw Roulette thing was a bit of a bummer from jump, but things picked up at the end, in the last ten minutes or so.  It was John “I am Clark Kent’s still-American clone” Cena and R-Truth, formally known as Jolly Coontime, in a table match.  R-Truth won, with interference from an “irked”, to say the least, CM Punk. 

Ah, but that wasn’t all.  He wasn’t just out there to taunt Cena as you would expect the number one contender to do.  Oh no, he had intention.  You could tell right away from the Stone Cold shirt he was wearing.  After doing his duty, he grabbed a microphone, walked away from the stage and went to the top of the long ramp that links wrestling Hell with the solitary stomping ground that the wrestlers of the company that shies away from wrestlers can parade around in.

He crossed his legs, sat down First American style (being PC this morning), and began what is arguably - nay, almost certainly - the finest promo to come out in a long, long time.

Check my earlier post to watch the promo; it’ll be the video with, I’m guessing, more than 100 notes on it.  At this point I’m at 70+ and it hasn’t even been 25 minutes. 

This promo needs no explanation.  It simply, to me, spells out a singular word: opportunity.

Let me clarify something: I hate John Cena.  I hate John Cena, I hate the Superstars that are being made to emulate John Cena, I hate John Cena’s fans, I hate John Cena’s merchandise, I hate John Cena’s movies, I hate John Cena’s gimmick, I hate John Cena’s state.  That’s primal hatred at it’s finest.  It didn’t start off this way though.

When John Cena first started, rather, when John Cena first showed up on my radar, he was the poster boy for “ruthless aggression” along with some others, and a “rapper”, and a bunch of other shit that I didn’t care about and don’t claim to remember now.  In his current state he’s the American soldier at home, a muscle man without a high five ghost, and a motivational speaker wannabe who is slowly and I do mean SLOWLY edging towards a heel turn.  He’s the face of the WWE, a kid friendly, radio friendly, media friendly, baby face jarhead knockoff, and - you’re gonna scratch your head at this - I respect that.

I even like that about John Cena.  What I do NOT like about Cena, what I pure HATE about John Cena, is how he’s literally Superman.  Sure, I joke about how he’s this super creature but at this point it’s just boring and stale, a detriment to the show as a whole.  Admittedly, when your biggest and most influential audience is little children, you have to cater to them, but you have to balance long term and short term.  The average child doesn’t remember shit past four and a half days.  If they do, it’s important to them or gets them presents.  Groom your audience from a young age so they can still be fans at an older age, i.e. - people like me, 21 year olds who don’t hate the PG Era but know that without proper planning that the audience that loved it in it’s prime will hate it in it’s next era.

I direct you to look through my tumblr for another post I did, about Yu-Gi-Oh!, partly touching on the audience thing.  That’s optional though.  Back to John Cena, our Superman, a man who literally takes a beating, says “No” in a monotone voice that makes Drake seem charismatic, and comes back to deliver a generic combo and a fireman’s carry (quite possibly a nod to the heroes of 9/11) to win the match and further act like the real American hero.

Well I say, “Hell to the no!”  He’s no G.I. Joe.  He’s no General Hawk.  He’s not even a Beach Head.  Symbolism is everything in sports entertainment.  John Cena symbolizes patriotism and that’s why they’re doing the same thing (sans the blatant American heroism) with who was once in my top five, Randy K. Orton.  Give it time.

Superman.  The all American hero from another galaxy entirely.  John Cena.  Where is his Lex Luthor? 

Yeah, I was building to a point.  The point of any superhero in a comic is to complete a story, and every story needs conflict, and conflict requires active opposition for a super powered character.  For Superman, that opposition is Lex Luthor.  Lex isn’t as strong as Superman, nor is he as fast, or even as patriotic if you wanna take it there (which is funny, considering Lex becomes president), but he’s a genius, and he knows how to ruin Superman’s day.  That’s his pleasure: he ruins Superman’s day, usually because Superman ruined Lex Luthor’s first. 

Superman and Lex Luthor are perfect foils, even though they both have more adversaries than each other.  Their battle is second only to (in the DC Universe) that of Batman and the Joker. 

Now let’s use the time honored skill of application.  If John Cena is Superman, then Lex Luthor must be represented by ________.  Fill in the blank.  You can’t, can you?  Why?  Because for one, Randy Orton isn’t capable of being a foil to John Cena.  You need two things for a proper yin-and-yang battle: dichotomy and ideological differences.  John Cena and Randy Orton have the dichotomy going on; it’s mostly physical.  The ideology, however, shifted as soon as Orton was moved to SmackDown and he went from “silent predator” to “face of SmackDown”.  You can’t have a true conflict between two faces. 

Enter CM Punk.  THE heel right now.  One of the few people that brings credibility to the WWE right now.  Look at him: he runs a cult, speaks borderline philosophically with every word, beats people up for the hell of it, and when he wants to be he’s just plain creepy.  Add to that his tremendous talent and the fact that he’s one of the better wrestlers you’ll see in the big times, especially if you know about his work with other promotions like Ring of Honor.  All of his feuds in the WWE have been terrific; he made Jeff Hardy seem like a decent performer and not a glorified stunt man; he made us all fear having children in fear of someone like them singing “Happy Birthday”.  That’s what a heel does.

And to make it even better, he made us love to hate him.  He’s that good.  He’s not just a Lex Luthor worthy of John Cena; he’s a Lex Luthor worthy of ANY John Doe Jersey that comes into the WWE with the intention of being the next big thing.  CM Punk is just a great heel, and that’s why he leads the New Nexus, and that’s why we love him.

Now after all that more or less unnecessary exposition, let’s talk briefly about the CM Punk shoot that has taken the IWC by storm.  Shoot or real, we don’t rightly know yet, but let me explain why I think this just screams opportunity.  It [the explanation] all starts with the event: Wrestlemania 28.

Wrestlemania 27 (I was there, and yes, the experience was the ship-snap-bip-bam-bizzle!) was underwhelming; it wasn’t bad, just weak.  The day after they set the first match for Wrestlemania 28: John Cena vs. The Rock.  A little while later it was unofficially turned into a WWE title match.  STOP!

John Cena said he would hold that title until that match.  That’s what, nine, ten months away?  No one expected R-Truth to defeat Cena at the politically incorrect Capitol Punishment.  But for that long, that’s stretching it just a little far.  That doesn’t make for much of a story.

Here’s my thought process.  Punk NEEDS to win at Money in the Bank, and go.  Kayfabe or otherwise, just go.  Take the terrible belt with him and go to Japan or back to Ring of Honor or, hell, if you wanna be fancy even go to Dragon Gate.  Know why?  Because those promotions can bring credibility to the belt.  Hell, Ring of Honor could bring credibility to the Divas division!

Okay, hyperbole, but let me continue.  Back in the WWE, things are looking ill.  Cena is humanized a bit, the company is in disarray while old Superstars are blaming the newer Superstars for stuff, and Randy Orton, or rather Christian, who should have the title back at this point, is the only one that can inspire any real order.  And while Punk is enjoying his belt in NJPW, Cena snaps.  He actually turns to wrestling and becomes more of a tweener than a face.  He goes off to Japan to get the belt back from THE heel.  Kind of like a Superman in the Mushroom Kingdom.  Imagine Cena being Superman, Punk being Blastoise, I mean Bowser, and the belt being Princess Peach: the bitch that keeps getting kidnapped and seems perfectly okay with it. 

See what that ambitious kind of story telling does?  It brings credibility to a belt with less and less.  It shows ambition on the part of the WWE Hollywood writers.  And it does something that is, right now, otherwise impossible: it makes Cena look like he DESERVES to be like Superman.  I repeat: LIKE Superman.  What’s a superhero without proper adversaries?  The only people that have been shown to challenge Cena lately are Orton, Punk and the Miz, and the last of those counts more so because of his mic skills.  Orton is SmackDown’s Cena with Edge’s retirement.  Punk is the villain, the Boss to Cena’s Naked Snake.  Remember, if you played Snake Eater, that Naked Snake went to the jungle to hunt down the Boss for the intent of completing a goal.  Cena’s goal would be to complete his goal and actually come across as a real champion, a TRUE fighting champion. 

That’s my two cents at least.  I’ll be honest: I’m half asleep right now and still a bit wobbly from the Smirnoff.  Lastly I’ll speak on the title.  Kryptonite, Superman’s weakness.  Luthor knows how to use it.  And Bruce Wayne, Batman, Superman’s ally, knows that it’s wise to always keep some on him in case Superman acts up, like in that Hush arc.  And Randy Orton always has that kryptonite.  Just like Big Boi… GOOD NIGHT!