Welcome, one and all, to the glorious debut of the Rajah Debates! For years, the best and brightest minds of the Rajah forum have done battle with words about a myriad of fascinating topics from the wrestling world, seeking to answer the questions that plague the wrestling community. Is John Cena actually a good wrestler? What’s the greatest wrestling show of all time? Is anyone as good as Bobby Lashley? (No.) But for the first time ever, we’re bringing the debates to you and letting you guys act as judge, jury and executioner.
The way this works is simple. Each match will involve a maximum of 3 350 word posts from each participant going in order. At the end, you guys and our panel of judges will vote to see you moves on to the next round to get one step closer to Rajah immortality. Over the course of the next month you’ll grow to know and root for these brilliant weirdos until we eventually crown a grand champion.
Sound good? I thought so! So let’s jump right in!
Now, two new combatants will enter the circle of debate from which only one can proceed. And here is the topic that they will do battle over:
First day of the debating season. Should I take it easy on you?
NOPE.
———————————–
15 world titles. 4 tag team championships. 5 United States championships. 2 Royal Rumble wins. Money In The Bank. 7 Wrestlemania main events.
There is no other professional wrestler that can touch John Cena’s legendary accomplishments. In kayfabe, John Cena IS the greatest wrestler of all time.
In the real world metric, we must looks at things such as promo ability, feud history, and match quality. Looking over John Cena’s career, i can easily name 5 high-level, all-time great feuds:
Cena vs Edge
Cena vs CM Punk
Cena vs The Rock
Cena vs Randy Orton
Cena vs Lesnar
In that time, John Cena has put on highly memorable feuds and fantastic matches. In addition to that, Cena has had excellent feuds and high-caliber matches with Daniel Bryan, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Umaga, and Batista. Cena has even dragged a good match out of The Great Khali. This past year, Cena has taken to wrestling mid-card talent like Stardust, Kevin Owens, Cesaro, Bray Wyatt, and Rusev and Cena has had excellent matches with every one of those men.
John Cena is one of the few superstars in the world who not only has few bad matches, but is a wrestler who pulls the absolute best out of his opponents. When someone works with John Cena, not only do they have excellent matches, but they instantly gain major credibility solely from being involved with this legend. John Cena makes every match, opponent, and championship he’s involved with bigger and bette than it was beforehand. There is no one in the WWE that measures up to Cena’s level as a wrestler & superstar.
Whether you’re measuring his talent in Kayfabe or basing it on match quality, John Cena is and always will be considered the best wrestler in WWE now and possibly ever.
—————————————–
Ah John Cena.
Hustle, Loyalty, Respect. One of the most important wrestlers in the history of the company, a combined 24 championship reigns (15 world titles, 5 US title reigns, 4 tag titles). John Cena is a lot of things. However, he has never been the best actual wrestler. His style has been defined as clunky, awkward, even boring. His spots can be heard in the ring, he has many a botches, as my friend Mr. stereotypical internet wresting fan will show here:
Thanks Mr. Fan. Here’s another with guest commentary fro Mr. stereotypical internet wrestling fan #2:
Thank you.
With the question posed, it’s easy to look at all that Cena has done in the past, but that’s not what the question is posing. Is Cena the best character in the WWE? He’s up there, but I wouldn’t say he’s the best. There are a few professional wrestlers I’d put at a higher level as a wrestler, there’s powerful technicians like Cesaro, super sellers like Dolph Ziggler, High flying warriors like Neville, and technical wizards like a healthy Daniel Bryan. But only one man has been able to combine many different styles and utilize many different styles to climb to the top of the WWE. I give you the best wrestler in the WWE, maybe even the world. I give you:
————————————-
Now, your argument seems to rely on the fact that John Cena is clunky and often botches his own signature moves. The issues with this argument are two-fold:
1) Everyone botches. It’s how wrestling works. We all know wrestling is a work and often times people mess up. Every legend in the industry has been featured on Botchamania in some capacity. For every missed springboard stunner, there’s 100 Attitude Adjustments done flawlessly.
2) John cena is clunky, this is a fact. Heck, he often moves around like his knees, hips, and elbows are arthritic. The thing is, professional wrestling is a style of pretending to fight, in which you must convince people that you’re really fighting. Cena may not have the prettiest offense, but he does a heck of a job convincing people that he’s in there fighting for his life. Even with his limited selling and clunky wrestling, the target demographics of children and older fans are absolutely enamored with Cena, buy into his ring style, buy into the Cena brand, and buy up his stuff.
While smarks will vote for guys like Bryan or Rollins as the best wrestler in the company due to their “work rate” and “movesets”, John Cena makes the casual fan believe that he is the best by making them perceive that everything he does is deadly and causing them to suspend their disbelief. John Cena is a man who much like Hogan and Austin before him, truly grabs the attention and imagination of the common fan and, in my opinion, that is what makes someone the best professional wrestler.
———————————–
Oh hero… poor poor hero.
I’m going to drive a truck through your points here in just a minute, but first I want to strengthen my own. Here’s some greatness from Mr. Rollins.
Thanks Seth. Now in your original post, you mentioned all of these great feuds that Cena had. Which were nice waaayyy back when they happened, but this is 2015. Is Hulk Hogan a great wrestler now because of what he did in his distant past? Of course not. Cena was a great talent, but that’s not the point raised here. He isn’t the best wrestler in the WWE, it’s Seth’s title now. Just like the WWE World heavyweight title he currently holds.
However, your last post brought up two points.
My response to #1. Yes, some people do botch. But John does it more and more often these days. Those two clips I showed? They happened less then 6 months ago, and while Seth has done it, that was only one time. Cena did the same botch twice on the same hold to the same guy. That’s alarming and unsafe.
My response to #2. I could say a lot of things, but I’m going to show you this picture first:
What is convincing in this picture so that someone may believe in his style, that he is fighting for his life? It’s borderline ridiculous as a professional wrestler to think that this is the type of selling and technical prowess is acceptable. Just like how it’s ridiculous to think that John Cena is the best wrestler in the WWE.
Seth is such a smooth wrestler that makes his strikes look painful, made moves like the Curb Stomp look like an amazing finisher, shown here:
You don’t have to be clunky and awkward to be “believable”, you can have good looking strikes, some high flying moves sprinkled in with some kick ass action and some believable selling sprinkled in. Seth Rollins is the best wrestler in the WWE, not John Cena.
——————————