Hi Scott, hope you are well.
I agree with your rants regarding the finish of Cena-Lesnar, but one thing you wrote makes me wonder. You mentioned that the WWE was desperate to alter the character of Cena (and I agree this was a great moment to do so), but are they really? They have been doing the same thing with him for close to seven years now, so how desperate can they be? Rightly or wrongly, they are obviously content with where they are with him, as they have stuck with super-Cena for so long, so why would they be expected to change? WE might be desperate, but are they?
On a related tangent, how many times in one match/moment has the WWE/WWF set fire to such a big pile of money in the middle of the ring? Austin shaking hands with Vince at the end of WM 17 comes to mind, and perhaps not going with Flair-Hogan at WM VIII, but other than that? Thoughts?
It’s not that they’re desperate to change Super-Cena, it’s that they’re desperate for us to CHEER Super-Cena. They've tried every two-bit booking technique they can think of in the past 7 years to get the jaded hardcore fans on board the Cena Express and not do the embarrassing “Cena Sucks” thing because that shows people might be capable of making their own decisions. The irony of course being that if they went out and turned him into a heel, people would immediately cheer him as a babyface no questions asked.
As for the burning piles of money, the biggest was without question the RAW where Stephanie was revealed as the owner of ECW, not only because it burned through a million angles on one show, but it also presented exactly the scenario that no one wanted to see as a fan: The hardcore badasses of ECW subservient to a woman. Whatever value the remains of Heyman’s company had at that point were rendered totally moot. Also, Goldberg in the wig in 2003.