I know we as ‘smart’ fans can’t wait for the moment Cena turns heel –
it will happen within his career but I don’t see it happening this
year or next. The basic argument seems to be ‘everyone boos Cena
anyway why not just have him be heel and re-invent himself’. Whilst I
think Cena will probably do great work as a heel the boos he gets for
everything he does now will almost certainly be replaced with cheers
by those current haters – therefore creating the exact problem they
had in the first place.
Thoughts?
It wouldn’t really be a “problem” in that case, because their end goal is always to get people to cheer him. It’s the same thing with Rock in the 90s, where they built him up into a super-strong heel and people just loved him so much that they didn’t want to boo him any more. If their problem is that they’ve made Cena into such a great heel that people cheer him, that’s a good problem to have. Don’t forget that Cena turned babyface in the first place because the goofy rapper gimmick that everyone remembers turned into a hard-edged heel act where he was doing crazy stuff like giving Rikishi the FU and generally getting mad cred from the fans. The backlash started once the perception became that he was getting shoved down everyone’s throat. So yeah, a heel turn could easily lead to him getting legitimately over as a babyface. Really though, he’s been on top for six straight years now, you’d think it’s time to let him do movies and Make-A-Wish stuff fulltime and just push someone else.