A British Point of View: John Cena and HBK the same?
Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of A British Point of View!
I would first like to offer my condolences to the friends and family of the late Eddie ‘Umaga’ Fatu. He was a great athlete who have the abilities of a big and small man. He was incredibly agile and always made his characters entertaining and believable. I only ever watched him from an arena seat but he always gave 110% and it’s sad to see another wrestler gone.
I would also like to thank all of you who responded to my debut column and made me feel very welcome. I have tried to respond to your feedback as quickly as possible and there was some interesting points raised. I will look into some of these points raised in future columns but today I wanted make a comparison:
Is John Cena the same as HBK?
I was watching some old stuff from 1996 when HBK was the WWF champion and the main face for the company throughout the summer. Whilst I was watching I couldn’t help but keep thinking that this is what’s happening today with John Cena.
HBK at that time was being pushed to the moon due to some heavy WWF stars jumping ship to WCW. HBK had all the support that John Cena does… from women who thought he was hot and kids who wanted to be like him. At first he seemed the typical babyface and had the general support of the entire crowd, but as his run as the WWF champion continued he seemed to alienate some of his fans.
This seemed more apparent when HBK faced Sycho Sid at the 1996 Survivor Series. HBK was the clear babyface and Sid was the monster heel.
However when Sid made his entrance he got a surprisingly large pop from the crowd, this made him came across as the babyface. During parts of the match the crowd started booing Shawn quite loudly and seemed to side with Sid. HBK seemed to be losing the crowd and he lost the title that night.
Does any of this seem familiar with today’s situation? So are John Cena and HBK the same? In my opinion… no. Why? HBK’s timing was perfect and he COULD wrestle!
