In the words of WWE chairman Vince McMahon, John Cena was the last guy in WWE to truly reach out and grab the elusive brass-ring. You can question the validity of McMahon’s statement, and you can certainly point to guys like CM Punk and Daniel Bryan as guys who tried to reach out and grab the brass-ring, but weren’t given a fair shot at taking it. However, whether you like it or not, McMahon is correct in that John Cena was the last guy who was able to become an irreplaceable, mega-star for WWE.
If you listened to CM Punk on the Art of Wrestling podcast last year, then you know WWE can, at times, be a very creatively-stifling environment, and if a guy is getting over who isn’t in WWE’s immediate or future plans, they tend to do everything in their power to bury the guy. Cesaro is a perfect example of that.
But, with John Cena and Randy Orton approaching 40, it’s becoming more and more clear that WWE is in dire need of new, top stars. In fairness, their giving it a pretty good shot with Seth Rollins, and they’re trying with Roman Reigns. But, neither of them are where they need to be, especially if one of them wants to take John Cena’s place as the new “face who runs the place.”
The aforementioned Daniel Bryan could have been, at least temporarily, the guy who took Cena’s spot at the top, which would have given Roman Reigns more time to improve, and truly become ready to be WWE’s top man. However, injuries and WWE’s belief that Bryan wasn’t a marketable champion put a stop to any opportunity he would have had to take Cena’s spot atop WWE.
While promoting the WWE 2K16 video game, Daniel Bryan was asked about “Stone Cold” Steve Austin being on the cover of the game, and what he think that says about today’s WWE roster, and Bryan gave a very honest answer, saying that it shows that WWE hasn’t done a very good job at creating new, and interesting stars in recent years.
“One of the things I think it shows is that we have not really created enough new stars, to where we put new stars on the front of the video game, so that should be the overall bigger concern. We need to not just rely on people from the past. There is almost this mentality these stars are bigger than the current stars, and they keep going with the mentality when the guys now are every bit as good as the guys from before, it is just they need to be given the platform.”
Not a whole lot of guys in WWE, Daniel Bryan included, have been given the platform to become as big as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, or even John Cena in recent years due to WWE being very picky about who they want the face of the company to be.
It’s been some time since WWE has tried to build upon something that organically got over. Even the Daniel Bryan “YES!” stuff, which completely took over WWE in 2013-2014, was squashed and buried almost immediately following Bryan’s WWE Title win at WrestleMania 30 .
If WWE is going to create new, main-event stars, they need to change their tune on who they want to be at the top, because it seems that the fans want to see someone other than the traditional tall, muscly, good looking guy as the face of the organization.
[Image via Valerie Macon / Getty Images ]
