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In our ongoing series of Positive/Negative moments from 2017, we turn our attention to John Cena. In a year in which the Cenation leader equalled Ric Flair's record of 16 World Championships, we were also reminded of how frustrating and obstructive the man can be.
While he might only have one foot left in the company, Cena can still act as resident party-pooper given half the chance, and the last 12 months were no exception.
Let us know what you thought of John Cena's year in the comments below. In the meantime, here are 5 negatives from John Cena's WWE run in 2017.
#5 Not putting Miz over at Wrestlemania
In the recent article listing the positives from John Cena's time in the WWE during 2017, we stated that his feud with the Miz in the run-up to Wrestlemania 33 was one of the best pieces of work of the entire calendar year.
However, when it came to the match itself, everything quickly reverted back to the same-old frustrating, Cenaesque B.S. As was expected, Miz went into the match as the de facto babyface, with the entire crowd playing off his antics while Cena did his best to pretend he wasn't the heel.
In typical Cena fashion, he spent most of the match on the backfoot before making a miraculous come back to defeat his opponent, seemingly from nowhere. The victory was without consequence or purpose and served to help nobody.
Given Miz's fantastic work during the feud, this would have been the perfect occasion to have given him the ultimate rub by defeating the 16-time World Champion on the grandest stage of them all. Afterall, the A-lister was staying around and would form a large part of the company's plans going forward, whereas Cena was destined only for a lengthy period away from our screens.
Love or hate The Miz, one has to admire his loyalty and determination to do right by his employers, even when they don't show him the same level of respect.
#4 That awkward proposal scene
One reason people will forward as to why Cena had to win his match against Miz was that the proposal scene at the bout's conclusion wouldn't have been as effective if he had lost. This is erroneous on two levels.
Firstly, it is a crying shame that one of the WWE's best performers was sacrificed so that Cena and Nikki Bella could act out a kayfabe proposal that nobody cared about or wanted to see. Secondly, the result of the match would have made no difference, in fact, it would have made more sense for Cena and Bella to lose but when find comfort in the fact that they'd be spending the rest of their lives together.
But apart from all this, the proposal was a negative simply because of how poorly it was carried out. Given the fact that the two had already been engaged for quite some time before Wrestlemania, most fans knew this was not a genuine proposal of marriage. But given the fact that the two are technically entertainers, the acting skills were so sub-par that it makes one wonder why they even bothered.
The sight of Nikki Bella standing there like a plank of wood with a half-hearted look of surprise on her face was enough to make fans of Professional Wrestling take their Mania bathroom/beer break a couple of matches early.
Yes, very few people might have wanted to see this, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have turned into something special. If only the two people involved actually gave a damn.
#3 Doing everything he used to criticise The Rock for
Back in 2011/12 when The Rock was busy throwing insult after insult at Cena in the run-up to their Wrestlemania 28 match, the leader of the Cenation actually started to win a few of the fans around. Rather than attack the Rock personally, he decided to point out the hypocrisy that he felt the People's Champ was demonstrating.
Cena picked up on the fact that despite promising the fans that he had returned home, Rock rarely made a physical appearance on either RAW or Smackdown, instead choosing to pre-record promo segments and broadcasting them via satellite during the show.
This was an effective move on Cena's part and almost made him appear like a worthy opponent to one of the best talkers the industry has ever seen.
Fast forward to 2017 and Cena finds himself in a very familiar position. Rather than learn from the hypocrisy that he once accused the Rock of, John is doing the exact same thing, making sporadic appearances yet promising on each of his returns that he still loves the business and considers it his number one priority.
There are, of course, many benefits to John Cena taking a backseat from the WWE, and nobody would actually criticise him for trying to pursue other avenues. But this doesn't mean he has to constantly lie to fans and pretend that he is still the face that runs the place. If only he would acknowledge that times are changing and his in-ring tenure is coming to an end like we all know it is.
#2 His pointless contribution at Survivor Series
One of Cena's many 2017 'returns' came just before the Survivor Series PPV last month. And from a business standpoint, this made a lot of sense. Why wouldn't you bring in one of your most popular names in order to help make the PPV sell?
From a wrestling storyline perspective, however, Cena might not even have bothered involving himself in this one. His inclusion came essentially from nowhere, wedged in by GM Daniel Bryan in an attempt to counter the fact that RAW would be lining up both Triple H and Kurt Angle.
And to make matters worse, he didn't even use his Survivor Series cameo appearance to help get anybody over. In a match that included the likes of Finn Balor and Braun Strowman, Cena was instead eliminated by Kurt Angle in rather unceremonious fashion.
How much more would it have meant if Cena had become eliminated by the hands of the Monster Amongst Men? How much more effective would the Survivor Series main event have been if a new star like Balor was given the limelight, vanquishing the biggest threat that the Smackdown team posed?
Sadly we will never know, as Cena's half-hearted involvement was over before we even noticed he was there.
#1 Everything about his feud with Roman Reigns
It might not strike all of us as particularly special or important, but from the WWE's perspective, Roman Reigns vs. John Cena is this generation's Rock vs. Hogan or Michaels vs. Austin. It signals the issuing in of a brand new era for the company, as one poster boy hands over the torch to another.
This is why, despite the inevitable reluctance from a certain section of the fanbase, Cena and Reigns simply had to meet on the biggest stage possible. We should have been given a situation that younger fans will be able to look back on in the future, at the time when their former hero gave way to their new one.
Instead, Cena vs. Reigns from 2017 proved to be one of the most underwhelming story angles of all time. The promos, while they occasionally cut deeper than the majority, still came across as scripted and formulaic. Cena pretty much used them as a way to massage his own ego while Reigns struggled to put one coherent put-down together.
The whole thing just felt off, which is a shame considering what it could have been.
And to make matters worse, we didn't even get that good of a match at the end of it. Perhaps the two men just don't have decent chemistry together, but the fact that it was held at a throwaway PPV that it didn't even main event did not help matters.
Who knows whether these two will meet again, but if they ever do, it needs to be 1000 times better than what we saw earlier this year.
