Patron Saints: Four Early John Cena Matches

The third episode of The Patron Saints of Sick Sons of Bitches is out today. It’s not a BIG EGG production, but this episode (and next week’s) is about John Cena, and a number of essays I’ve written on Cena in this space came up, so I figured I’d do a little bonus post looking at a couple of Cena matches that my cohost and I didn’t talk about on the podcast. I may or may not do this next week, too, as there’s a couple of WWE Vault finds that look interesting, my brain keeps circling around the Kevin Owens feud, and so on. In any case, thank you for opening this very thinly-veiled excuse to post a link to my podcast — I’m very happy with the response to it thus far and only see it getting better from here.

The Prototype vs. Frankie Kazarian (NECW 4/27/01)

According to NECW’s YouTube page, this bout happened because John Cena happened to be home gathering his things for the move to Louisville, where OVW was headquartered. The temptation in going back to a famous wrestler’s earliest matches is to try to forecast their future success from it — Orchid and I did this when we talked about Cena’s WWE television debut against Kurt Angle — but I don’t know anything about his Prototype era, and the only Kazarian matches I’ve seen were early AEW SCU tags that I was routinely pretty mean about in my Fanfyte recaps. We all have our blindspots. 

John Cena looks insane as The Prototype. Wearing black trunks and spiked, bleach blond hair, were it not for the fact that he’s all smiles, hugging and high fiving his family at ringside, he’d otherwise look like a new model Terminator visiting this NASCAR mural-bedecked “Good Time Emporium” on a mission to kill John Conner and win the war against humanity before it begins. Knowing what the people came to see, that’s how Kaz sells for Cena early, taking an Irish whip over the turnbuckle and out into the chairs. Kaz bails out to the crowd every time he bumps for Cena until Cena follows him out for a bit of a brawl, during which Kazarian establishes control. 

It’s interesting watching Cena move. He’s much closer to a bodybuilder’s build here than at any point in his WWE career — he’s always shredded, but here he looks competition-ready. You wouldn’t think of that sort of person as particularly lithe, but he’s pretty nimble, possessing a good dropkick and a willingness to bump, hurling himself down to the mat when Kaz hits a leg lariat and taking a hip toss/neckbreaker combo that was years ahead of the tech anyone in WWE had. He’s got some odd moves of his own, too, like a scoop slam that he transitions into a sit-out driver. Imagine this man, this total freak of nature, on a slightly different trajectory where he’s in the SoCal indies as they’re starting to heat up. 

This is a fine match. It’s too long, but I’m sure Cena’s family, who apparently make up the bulk of the crowd, would disagree. Cena’s cleaner and more effective in his role than Kazarian, partly because he has said crowd in the back pocket of his future jorts. I have no idea when the phrase “indie darling” came into being, but that’s the style Kaz is going for, a lot of springboards and high-flying moves that are somewhat antithetical, especially in 2001, to working as a heel. You’d like to see him actually work to wear Cena down, to stooge a bit more, but when Cena drills him with his soon-to-be-trademark flying shoulder tackle, it hardly matters. His fire-ups and comebacks were there almost from day one. Bro really was the prototype.

Rating: ***

The Prototype vs. The Leviathan (OVW 2/20/02)

The version of this above also includes a pretty good promo on David Flair (where he threatens to beat David so badly that Ric will put him up for adoption and take on Prototype as his son) as well as the finish of the match, which is apparently Flair’s first in OVW, over someone who was a) undefeated in singles competition, and b) the number one contender to the OVW Title. Neat bit of booking, though I imagine if you’re David Flair the head trip from being a main character on a show watched by millions of people to being booked like a no-hoper in a developmental territory with TV on a regional WB affiliate was intense. Maybe OVW rules?

Anyhow, this is the first ever singles match between John Cena and Batista, who is known in OVW as The Leviathan, the Demon of the Deep, managed by Synn (Stacey Cornette in fetish gear). Leviathan’s “pray for your body because your soul belongs to me” catchphrase goes hard as hell for something that doesn’t make a lick of sense. He’s the babyface, though whether that’s by design or because Prototype is a more detestable heel is unknown to me. Jim Cornette, on commentary, sounds like he’s reading copy written for the narrator of the 60s Batman TV show. …maybe OVW rules?

When you look at John Cena you’d never think he’d spend so much of his life fighting from underneath wrestlers who are booked to be stronger than him, but it’s one of his best modes: Brock Lesnar, Mark Henry, Bobby Lashley, Ryback, Batista — all of them present Cena with an unexpected problem, forcing him out of his comfort zone and into deep water. Not to keep hammering the “look at how early he got it” button, but it’s wild that he got this as early as 2002. It’s a task made easier by the fact that he’s the heel — he’s not a mature enough wrestler to do this as a babyface until later in his career — but watching him bump for The Leviathan, the pieces are there waiting to be assembled. 

I like this. It’s not a great match, but the vibes are remarkable. These two will main event WrestleMania in eight years, twin anchors of WWE television, and here they are in a black box theater given seven minutes of time and two of the carniest managers imaginable. Leviathan has a spookyboi gimmick and is basically being booked like Goldberg, all power moves and big strikes, and Cena leans into them with admirable abandon, not afraid to look weak while the cameras are rolling. There is a bit of Flair in what Cena does here, minimizing his own hulking frame and considerable athletic gifts in service to protecting Batista’s gimmick as an unstoppable monster — he actually does the Flair flop after taking some punches in the corner, falling right as Batista looks back at him. 

Cena’s destiny was to become a generational face, but watching him play championship heel on what amounts to territory television, it’s easier for me to understand the appeal of the heel turn that many WWE fans swore would “freshen him up.” Maybe this is what he was reaching back to when he finally did turn heel last year? In retrospect it’s kind of a disservice to both wrestlers to have the finish here be an ether-soaked rag to Leviathan’s face (“That hospital smell!” Cornette says to sell it), but that’s the catch-22 of regional wrestling — at the end of the day, neither Leviathan nor Prototype will be long for the territory, but their managers are. You’ve got to make Batista and Cena look good for whoever’s watching the tapes up in Titan Towers. You’ve got to keep Synn and Kenny Bolin strong for whoever they manage once their charges are called up to SmackDown.

Rating: ** & ¾

John Cena vs. Paul London (12/3/02) & John Cena vs. Bryan Danielson (2/8/03)

I don’t lend much credence to John Cena’s story that he was almost fired from WWE until he got lucky with the rap gimmick. I mean, who the hell am I to dispute Cena’s narrative, but WWE was not as cut-heavy an employer as they are now, and people in his position could usually count on a solid 2-3 years of employment before they were given notice. Maybe he was the victim of a rib. Maybe that was some agent’s idea of motivation. Either way, I cannot imagine Cena was happy to find himself on WWE Velocity, SmackDown’s B-show where a rotating cast of commentators idly chatted about storylines over pre-taped matches, but a) Velocity is a lot of fun, one of many hidden gems in WWE’s archive, b) it allowed Cena to fine-tune his new heel act beyond the minutes he was getting on SmackDown, and c) it turns out that Cena is an excellent B-show wrestler.

I don’t know which of Cena’s Velocity matches is the most famous, but it’s probably obvious why I’ve picked these two out: London and Danielson are both incredible wrestlers. Danielson, it turns out, will become a hugely important wrestler to Cena’s career and WWE writ large, but in 2003 he’s on his fourth of six tryout matches that year, one of the last of a string of check-ins the company made on him after his first release from their developmental system in 2001. Paul London ends up signing to WWE about six months after his match against Cena and has an implausibly long run with the company where he’s a really fun midcard presence but even in that role never gets to wrestle to his full potential. 

Both London and Danielson are here to lose to Cena, obviously, but Cena’s game in both matches is to prove his versatility as a member of WWE’s more wrestling-forward brand. On the podcast, I say that Cena is an exceptional talent when it comes to figuring out how to leverage his size and athleticism against whatever makes his opponent unique. You see it in the Leviathan match above, and you see it in both matches here. Against London, he finds himself overtaken and outmaneuvered by a faster, more nimble opponent, all wild swings and errant charges until finally, having missed one clothesline too many, he decides to take a risk by diving low, right as London goes for a cross body. It’s an incredible spot, simple but unexpected, followed-up with a beast of a lariat, after which Cena becomes an overbearing bully in control. A great heel performance in a compact frame.

Against Danielson, he tries to utilize his strength to gain the advantage in a straight-up wrestling match, but he is too blunt an instrument to keep up — the American Dragon manipulates his arm easily, smoothly escapes Cena’s own attempts at basic arm wringers, and goads Cena into a drop toe hold. There’s no real attempt on the part of Josh Matthews or Ernest Miller to tie Cena’s match against the technical Danielson to his upcoming bout with Brock Lesnar, a legend in the amateur ranks before he joined WWE, and this was probably the last thing Cena or Danielson had in mind, but this is a big stylistic test for Cena, ahead of that match and in general. Danielson, as Daniel Bryan, will come to redefine his skillset to fit the grind of weekly WWE television, but he’s under no such pressure to do so here, and his idea of “technical wrestling” is far more idiosyncratic than Kurt Angle’s or Chris Benoit’s, hewing closer to his mentor William Regal (who Cena, implausibly, never wrestled one-on-one). Cena has to force Danielson into a mistake, and he does, forcing a test of strength, which he works Danielson down into a pin.

The sequence they work out from there is incredible, with Danielson kicking out into a bridge, Cena throwing the whole of his weight on Danielson in an attempt to break it, failing twice despite his size advantage, taking a monkey flip, then, game over, leveling Dragon with a lariat. Like in the London match, this changes the tenor of things, Cena taking control as a bullying heel. Danielson doesn’t stop proving himself to be a problem — he gets to display his kicks and uppercuts in another tidy exchange culminating in a PK for two — but Cena snuffs out his hope right quick with a powerbomb for three. This is, just so you’re aware, a three minute match. There are main event wrestlers on television today who would kill for their 30-minute PPV matches to have as much heft as this throwaway one does.

Ratings
Cena vs. London: ***
Cena vs. Danielson: *** & ½