>>63146561>Roman Reigns bringing in viewers>a good thingWhat's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of months ago when I was asked to comment on John Cena. I went to the WWE Network watched a number of John's matches. I suffered a great deal in the process. The promos were dreadful; the wrestling was terrible. As I watched, I noticed that every time that John was getting beat badly, he would magically recover and perform a sequence that is known as the "5 moves of doom." I began marking on the back of my notepad every time this sequence was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the notepad several dozen times. I was incredulous. John's routine is so governed by monotony and repetition that he has no other style of wrestling.
But when I wrote that on /wwe/, I was denounced. I was told that new wrestling fans would now cheer for and watch only John Cena, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If John Cena was what it took to make them pick up "wrestling," wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. John Cena will not lead our children on to Samoa Joe's "Joe Vs. Punk II" or his match at "TNA Unbreakable" with AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. It will not lead them to Shinsuke Nakamaura vs. Kota Ibushi at "NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 9" or Bryan Danielson vs KENTA at "ROH Glory By Honor V - Night 2" or Sami Zayn vs Adrian Neville at "NXT TakeOver: R Evolution."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of John Cena by Roman Reigns. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these new fans are loving John Cena at 6 or 7, then when they get older they will go on to like Roman Reigns." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you like John Cena, you are, in fact, trained to like Roman Reigns.
