When did you notice the flaws in John cena?

I was very annoyed by him and hated him up until like 2007. He started to win me over with his ability to have really good matches. The character is corny and the superman booking can get tiresome, but the man can flat out go and will never get another "Cena sucks" chant from me.

Reading this thread hurt my brain.

I think I was thinking about this earlier today? Hard to say because I am not sure I understand the question lol But anyways, I loved Cena through 2004. He had some memorable feuds and matches in the midcard. It was about when he moved into the main event I started to despise him. Part of it was how invincible he was made out to be. The other part, I fully believe, is I was growing into those teenage rebellious years and I was hellbent on hating him. Mind you, his moveset was made extremely limited during these years as well, but now that I've grown older I don't have the same disdain for Cena that I did then. He absolutely CAN wrestle, but its like Austin. When he became Stone Cold he stopped doing technical wrestling and became a brawler with just a few moves he used frequently. Cena did the same thing, and for longevity's sake, it is a smart move. Besides, I haven't really seen a match from Cena in a while where I was just like "wow, that was bad". I'm not a huge fan of his character (mostly because he's the underdog who is never actually the underdog and just laughs everything off), but I don't hate it either. I just want some sort of change or evolution. I still hate the way he does the STF though.

Cena was annoying to me, in all honesty, from the time he beat Edge for the title at Royal Rumble 2006 till around last year or the year before. I still find Cena cheesy with his promos and comebacks at people, but he doesn't annoy me as much as he used to. He's a great worker when you give him a 15 minute main event match, he can work. I remember on RAW in 2007, I think it was when they went to England, where he had a one hour match and I was impressed that he could pull that off even though he annoyed me.

I go in cycles with Cena. Sometimes he just really pisses me off with his "suddenly I'm fine again" style of selling and I'm not a fan of his promos at all generally speaking. But I also find in the big matches he excels. Not in the traditional way where people say he hits a new gear or some crap, but simply because I think he's bizarrely one of the most effective heels of all time.

When I think back, there are few characters in wrestling that I want to lose more in big match situations than Cena. Intentional or not (and I would love to find out that it's been intentional all along) the dude's basically the antichrist for my demographic or whatever you want to call it. He's corny as hell, massively kid fan oriented, comes across really ingenuine most of the time to me (although I don't doubt that he's a cool guy) and he wins all the damn time against guys that I percieve to be flat out better than him.

So when he goes up against Edge or Shawn Michaels or Bryan or Punk, I get behind my guy that much more because he's up against THE MAN WHO RUNS THE PLACE~ and it makes the moment that much sweeter, the atmosphere that much more electric when they get the win. Isn't creating moments like that really what wrestling's about?

A win vs Cena is the ultimate underdog victory whether that's what the WWE are trying to put across or not. He's the machine, and he fits the role perfectly.

Cena is one of the most entertaining wrestlers and has proven he can wrestle a stellar match out of anyone basically, so the 'LOL HE CANT WRESTLE, 5 MOVES OF DOOM" things are almost as overused as the word buried.

What annoys me is when the commentators say things about him they know people will obviously pick up on, like at SS when JBL said he was the only sole survivor in 03 when Benoit was there to. I know they can't mention him, but please don't bring that up in that case because people will obviously realise that's not right (I mean, I did straight away).

I turned on him not too long after he won his first WWE title, and I PROPERLY despised him. However, I can't remember exactly when the match was, but he managed to get a half-decent performance out of Khali and after that I started to have a begrudging respect for the guy. I'd go as far to say that I actually like him now, despite some of his corny 'comedy' exchanges.

Noticed he couldn't wrestle well: Pretty much his second match after debuting.

Noticed he was cheesy: As soon as he started doing the lame white rapper gimmick, especially after it became a babyface lame white rapper gimmick.

Grew out of blind Cena hatred and realised that "5 MOVES OF DOOM OMG SUPERMAN" comebacks are what every top babyface does: 2007 when he had great matches with opponents as diverse as Umaga, Khali and Lashley.

As a kid actually. Even during Cenas rise to superstardom I never bought into his whole shtick.