10 Years of Cena

One whole decade of John Cena.  His run (the wrestling portion) is longer than Stone Cold's and The Rock's.  That's incredible to think about.  While he hasn't had the cultural impact as those two gentlemen have had, he still nontheless has blazed his own trail with no one as a close second.

He's been the most over guy in the company, and the most despised guy (and not because he was supposed to be).  He's been an innovative free-style rapper, to a giant ball of merchandise "rapped" around a human being. 

I remember John Cena's debut crystal-clear.  He came out to face Kurt Angle, telling him he had "ruthless aggression" (WWE's theme for about 2 weeks) and the crowd responded surprisingly well, and Angle and Cena had a really good TV match. 

He fell off the map after his first month, albeit a nice feud with Jericho to start with (He can thank Jericho for it even happening in the first place).  Allegedly he was on the verge of being fired in the fall of '02, but a chance freestyle rap on an airplane caused management to say, "We got to get that on TV!" 

"Ice Ice Cena" was born that Halloween, and he quickly became must-see TV on Smackdown.  But it wasn't until his infamous promos against then-WWE champion Brock Lesnar in the spring of '03, (and my personal favorites of all his raps) that made Cena turn the corner from entertaining mid-carder, to main eventer and potential WWE flag-bearer. 

Fast forward to summer '05 and one WWE title reign later, and Cena is moved to the "flagship" Monday Night Raw.  I always thought that putting Cena on Raw helped expose his lack of "technical" skills.  Maybe he wasn't that edited on Smackdown (which is what I'm assuming here), and we were all just so enamored with his mic work that we didn't care.  But I personally found myself hating the man the moment he walked onto the Highlight Reel Set that fateful evening.  It didn't help that once he won the title he went from the "Dr. of Thuganomics" to the "Chain-Gang Soldier" (thus eliminating his killer theme song in the process, for the new pile of crap that we have heard every Monday since). 

Whatever case the Cena backlash (no pun intended) began in '05 came on full force in early '06, and has came up in certain cities, or events ever since.  I mean look at this picture           ====================>
How can you not help but think he's not a giant tool?  I guess if your 8, or a female maybe it would be "cute".

 I will say that Cena kicked the crap out of the Rock verbally leading up to Wrestlemania, and showed that when push comes to shove, Cena's entertainment value can compete with the biggest of boys.  Granted "The Great One" totally mailed it in; even writing on his hand???? 

Which I guess brings me to the final, and probably most important part.  Cena is a company guy.  He is THE guy.  Love him or hate him, he's in it for the long haul.  So with that said, we are 10 years in, and probably have 10 more to go.  He will probably have 48 title reigns by the time he hangs up his "pumps".