The retirement of John Cena marks the end of a career in professional wrestling that has lasted for more than two decades. Cena’s final match ended with him being submitted by a rising star of World Wrestling Entertainment—a fitting farewell for a veteran company man.
Owners of professional wrestling promotions tend to have fraught relationships with their top stars. “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan left Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation on bad terms. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin walked out of the company. In the young John Cena, McMahon found a star who was as loyal as he was disciplined.
It was a time in which World Wrestling Entertainment (as it had been rebranded) was cleaning up its image. It was trying to appeal to kids. Out went the blood and the bikinis. In came bright colours and a straightforward superhero.
Cena had earned popularity as a white rapper—Vanilla Ice with a fireman’s-carry powerslam. With a vacuum at the top of WWE, though, he became more of a classic “babyface.” “Super Cena”, as he was sarcastically known, became loved and hated for taking on impossible odds and prevailing. It seemed as if a nuclear bomb could be dropped on Cena, in storyline, and he would still survive and win.
Cena was charismatic and built like Adonis. But he was also incredibly committed. As well as wrestling week after week, year after year, he threw himself into WWE’s charity work and into cheerful, fresh-faced promotional appearances.
Children loved him. Veteran fans despised him. His limited wrestling abilities and bland persona made him the bête noire of the sort of fan who thought that pro wrestling had been watered down. When he appeared at a revival of the edgier Extreme Championship Wrestling, he was booed relentlessly. On the other hand, that Cena leaned into the hatred of such fans—throwing his shirt out to the crowd even as it was repeatedly tossed back to him—was the sort of symbol of his dedication that earned him grudging respect even among his detractors.
Cena and McMahon could be seen as the two sides of a deeply two-faced organization. Cena had the slogan “Rise Above Hate” and represented WWE’s “Be A STAR” anti-bullying campaign. McMahon was a comically short-tempered and vindictive boss who bullied some of his most loyal and beloved employees. (Jim “JR” Ross, for example, was a frequent target of on-air abuse.) Cena was not just a company man in the sense of being loyal to the company. He was a company man in the sense of being the man the company was rebuilt around.
This could make him seem unreal—a spouter of bizarre clichés (his Twitter bio claims that his account is “a forum of thoughts and perspectives designed to ignite conversations and actions leading to growth”) and painfully bland PR mush. He felt like an American from an alternative reality where 2001 had never ended—stoical, wholesome and patriotic. When he announced, at the end of a WWE show in 2011, that Osama bin Laden had been killed, it seemed like it could have been scripted.
Sadly, this icon of pure-hearted Americana was performing on the decks of a nation in decline. The eternal Reaganism was a cosplay act. Always committed to his role, Cena apologized in Mandarin to the Chinese people for calling Taiwan a country while promoting Fast & Furious 9. He was so desperately committed to good international PR that he claimed that his colleague Phil “CM Punk” Brooks overcoming his ethical reservations and performing in Saudi Arabia moved him to the point of tears.
With a “Nature Boy” Ric Flair or a “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, one could see the human in the bombastic character. With John Cena, it was difficult to know who John Cena the man might be if he was not John Cena the performer. The unreality of Cena means that he has struggled to find major roles outside of WWE. Dave “Batista” Bautista has had a varied and successful acting career, but John Cena is just John Cena.
If he is known for anything outside of the ring, it is appearances in online memes. His “You can’t see me” taunt has inspired a running joke that he is invisible (the top comment of a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience asks why Rogan is interviewing a microphone). But at the risk of being pat, it is also fitting when the man’s personality is so enigmatic.
Still, whatever is real, fake, or in-between, Cena has committed himself to everything fully. He has come back from major injuries so quickly that he might as well have been an X-Man. He has always had the body of someone who lives off plain tuna and sleeps on a weight training bench. He has always behaved as if he would take the time to build a homeless admirer a house with his bare hands. He might seem uncomfortably like the sort of professional wrestler an AI would generate, but his career has been powered by a bizarre level of human will and effort. It has been an astonishing feat.
In the end, sheer consistency has turned Cena into an all-time legend. He has sustained his good-guy image—which, to be clear, might reflect his genuinely being a good guy—without the blow-ups that dogged a Hulk Hogan or the bitterness that curdled in a Bret Hart.
As the consummate company man, though, his legacy is questionable. A Ric Flair, a Hulk Hogan, or a Steve Austin became bigger than the business, fueling the tradition of professional wrestling with their iconic status. Cena dedicated himself to ensuring that nothing was bigger than the WWE brand. Yet the brand is only as big, in the long-term, as the performers it encompasses. If their success does not expand to stretch the limits of what the business can sustain, the success of the brand will turn out to be hollow.
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