John Cena vs. Rusev Doesn’t Benefit Anybody
As announced recently on WWE.com following a confrontation on the Royal Rumble post-show, John Cena will battle the undefeated United States Champion Rusev at Fast Lane. This match had originally been considered a lock for WrestleMania 31 among rumor mills, but will have a curtain call at the inaugural Fast Lane event. Rusev is yet to be defeated by either pinfall or submission in WWE, and finished the runner-up to Roman Reigns in the Royal Rumble. However, he has been kept almost completely separate from the biggest superstar in the company at present, and thus many consider this the road towards his streak to come to an end.
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However, although it is imperative that both John Cena and Rusev compete on the Grandest Stage of Them All after an excellent year, having it against one another doesn’t benefit either competitor, the rest of the roster, or the fans. What this is going to lead to is an incident at both Fast Lane and onto WrestleMania where all of the work to turn Rusev into a dominant, anti-American mega heel will be torn asunder by him being cheered against Cena, a man that generates pure animosity towards him. It has long since reached the point that as long as he is a babyface, no superstar he faces will receive as many boos as John Cena.
This creates a clear problem, as the crowd backing Rusev is the last thing WWE would likely want to happen. The fervent nature of how much the audience will support the Russian sympathizer over their distaste with the WWE’s creative direction was clearly demonstrated in the Royal Rumble, where the crowd were begging him to eliminate Reigns. Cena is in the exact same boat as Reigns, in that numerous devoted fans have grown tired of the company shoving him down their throats.
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Furthermore, Cena has developed a reputation for being the man to kill the undefeated pushes of rising superstars. This began back in 2007 when he was the first man to overcome Umaga, and soon after became one of the few men to best the Great Khali. These early instances reached a zenith at last year’s WrestleMania, where he was the man to inflict a first defeat to Bray Wyatt, with the crowd displaying their obvious distaste for the result both during the show and the following night on RAW. It appears that despite how over and fixed in the main event Cena clearly is, the creative team persist in making him the underdog and push him to the fullest.
Why I believe this upcoming feud doesn’t benefit anybody is because I can already predict the course it is about to take, which is never a good thing. Cena and Rusev will trade promos and attacks in the build-up to Fast Lane, whilst hardly if ever competing as part of the same match. Then at the PPV, they will have an okay match, with Cena either winning by disqualification or losing by count out, with Rusev locking in the Accolade to show his dominance. Then, it will be a case of Cena redeeming both himself and the American people at WrestleMania. He’ll enter the arena donned in red, white and blue, accompanied by soldiers and Hulk Hogan, and then finally be the man to overcome Rusev to get the ‘feel good conclusion’.
So predictable, so boring and so not going to get the fans cheering for Cena. All this hopes to accomplish is increase their whining about Cena’s Superman persona, and kill the momentum Rusev has built up since his debut. The only benefit is that it will hopefully place the United States Championship back into prevalence by having Cena win the belt, but at the moment it seems like little more than an afterthought when it hasn’t been added to their Fast Lane match.
The reason a wrestling company should build up a dominant and powerful heel, is to use that to give a young, hungry babyface the rub they need to get over with the audience. John Cena has had enough of those moments, like when he scored huge wins over the likes of Big Show, JBL, Kurt Angle and Triple H in their prime. I’m not saying that Cena is passed his prime, but at this stage of his career he should be providing a launching pad for younger heels to become even more impressive. Consider if Rusev were to beat Cena at WrestleMania for a moment,fairly cleanly as well. It would make everybody stand up and take notice of him for good as a player for the future, and also mean that the person who finally overcomes the Super Athlete will get a huge boost from the experience.
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To be honest, although Cena stands proud as a defender of America, and is such conceptually ideal to be the one to defeat Rusev, he as a superstar does not need that accomplishment on his already stacked resume. Cena has done everything he needs to do, and stopping Rusev’s streak is just taking up unnecessary space. You know why this feud doesn’t benefit either man? Because after the WrestleMania match, nobody will remember it. Commentators won’t discuss how Cena was the man to beat Rusev for months to come and use that as a way to boost both superstars’ profiles. It will simply become a footnote of history, as Rusev sits in the midcard waiting for his next opportunity, in the same way that Bray Wyatt has had to boost himself back to near the summit.
In the end, if my predictions for the course of this feud ring true, then it benefits absolutely nobody. Hand Rusev to Ryback if you want to give somebody the rub for ending his streak, or give Jack Swagger his final opportunity to defend his country’s honor. Unfortunately, Cena gradually becomes a party of one who can challenge Rusev at WrestleMania that makes sense story-wise. The only issue is that is serves to give Rusev little hope of future progression, and hands the considerable boost from defeating the indomitable juggernaut to somebody that doesn’t need it in the slightest.