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John Cena Doing ‘The Job’ is Pushing WWE Stars to Another Level

By Rob Wolkenbrod

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As John Cena becomes a part-time player for WWE, he’s starting to help push the top Superstars to another level.

There’s always been a perception that John Cena “buried” WWE Superstars during his decade-plus on top of the roster. How true that, or if WWE just had Cena bumrush his way through everyone, may never be known. However, if you’re watching the John Cena of late 2016 and into 2017, this is proving to be a completely different guy.

Rarely did we see the Face That Runs the Place fail to look dominant from the late 2000’s and into this decade. He defeated the likes of Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar, and the Rock on a big stage. The only one who really thrived from dealing with Cena was CM Punk, as their 2011 Money in the Bank match pushed the former Straight Edge Superstar to another level. Those like Wade Barrett, the entire Nexus, Umaga, and even the Wyatt Family in 2014 saw their momentum crumble to pieces after going head-to-head with the West Newbury, MA native.

By May 2016, this all began to change when Cena returned from a shoulder injury.

AJ Styles was WWE’s MVP of 2016. He did just about everything a “rookie” could do, rising to the top of the match card three months after arriving in January. WWE would pair him with Chris Jericho and Roman Reigns, before sending him to Cena.

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When Styles turned heel in his segment with Cena, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, it seemed like just another way of feeding fresh blood to the guy that didn’t really need it. That somewhat held up when the Phenomenal One needed help at Money in the Bank 2016, but did indeed defeat the Leader of the Cenation.

SummerSlam was the real turning point for Styles, however, and the time when Cena really started to undergo his most drastic change — he put over someone on one of the biggest stages in WWE. The annual August pay-per-view may be the No. 2 show of the year, and it left the 16-time champ pinned clean in the ring. No Anderson. No Gallows. Nothing. It sent Styles off to Backlash, where he won the WWE Championship and held it all the way to Royal Rumble. We instead saw Cena symbolically leave his wristband in the ring.

As it turns out, Cena didn’t really “give up”. This seemed more like a changing of the guard, if anything. Leaving the wristband behind now looks like a symbolic “passing of the torch”. It’s a general one, not as loud as the Hulk Hogan-Rock or Rock-Cena ones were in recent years. This would be one that sees him pass the torch to the next generation of WWE stars — like Styles, Kevin Owens, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Bray Wyatt.

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Styles getting that SummerSlam win over Cena didn’t push him into the main event, because he had already been there since his feud with Reigns. If anything, it moved him to an elite level, something few stars never get anymore. The Ruthless Aggression Era had the stars of the Attitude Era around to help put them over and push them to the next status up, which made Cena, Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, Batista, and Edge all reigning supreme at the top of the roster.

For the Reality Era, or however you may proclaim it, the stars to do this were few and far between. Maybe it goes more toward the talent level being nowhere close to where it was 5-10 years ago, but there had been a time where no one but Punk got pushed to the next level, until Daniel Bryan rose via fan support at WrestleMania 30 in 2014.

Did this pushing-Superstars-to-another-level booking start all the way back in 2013, though? It may have when Bryan defeated Cena at SummerSlam 2013. One year later, Lesnar destroyed him at SummerSlam 2014. The only difference with those is Cena came back with a World Heavyweight Championship reign a few months after Bryan and infamously destroyed Rusev in early 2015, so there wasn’t a consistency here.

In 2016, the trend began with Styles, who rode through a huge back-half of the year with SummerSlam and a WWE Championship reign. He then put on an instant classic with Cena at the 2017 Royal Rumble, even in defeat. Then the former NJPW star went into both Elimination Chamber and the triple threat match on SmackDown looking like he belonged, and walked out looking even better because of the caliber of these bouts. This all goes back to what Cena did for him.

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On the other hand, there’s Bray Wyatt. Remember how he had all that momentum before WrestleMania 30, only to lose it all with his match against Cena? Well, three years later, the roles have changed.

If you had followed the WrestleMania 33 rumors up until Elimination Chamber, Wyatt looked like the guy to win the WWE Championship. That became the case at the show, which didn’t lead to a shocking result, if you read the potential spoilers ahead of time. However, there’s still a proper way to go about this, which WWE executed perfectly. This was similar to the title match on the Valentine’s Day episode of SmackDown. Who had been the biggest help of it all, though? None other than Cena.

Wyatt had already walked into these two matches with about as much momentum as he had since 2014. This new Wyatt Family, with Randy Orton and Luke Harper, did wonders for his career. He seemed reinvigorated and important again, unlike the past few years when WWE refused to give him the much-needed big-time win. It almost seemed like they felt that he didn’t need it, due to the “mystique” of his character. While that may have initially been true, this wore off fast in 2014 and with the loss to the Undertaker at WrestleMania 31.

At Elimination Chamber, the Eater of Worlds could have played it with roll-up pins or cheap shots. Instead, he was booked to look dominant — maybe more than ever. It started with the Sister Abigail on Cena to eliminate him, guaranteeing us that we would get a new champion. That left Wyatt and Styles to go head-to-head for about five minutes, dueling in an entertaining mini match of its own. One pinfall later, Wyatt stood tall with gold.

Two nights later, we had Wyatt involved in the triple threat match with Cena and Styles. It turned out to be PPV-caliber, and resulted in Wyatt pinning Cena again, this time to retain the belt. Back-to-back pins of the former Doctor of Thuganomics in such a short time almost never happens. Styles hadn’t even managed to do that. It made Wyatt look unstoppable and cemented his spot as a top star in WWE — not just hovering on the fringe of it anymore. Something like this had been needed if he’s actually going to main event WrestleMania 33, and not this being a disguise for the eventual Brock Lesnar vs. Goldberg title match.

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It’s a new era in WWE right now, one that has John Cena written all over it. However, it’s for a different reason this time around, unlike his dominance from the previous decade. Fresh faces are having their legacy cemented because of Cena, who is doing something that no one else is capable of doing on the roster in 2017.

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