If you’ve watched WWE over the last decade, you know two things about how perennial WWE Champion John Cena interacts with the promotion’s live crowds:
1. The high-pitched child or lady voices in the crowd chant, “Let’s go Cena!” This is immediately followed by all the deeper, adult voices in the crowd saying, “CENA SUCKS.”
2. John Cena incessantly references this and explains that he doesn’t care if you like him or hate him, he comes out here each and every week to entertain YOU, the fans.
Seriously, if you’ve missed the last ten years of wrestling, there’s your summarization. That is literally everything you need to know.
WWE will be touring Saudi Arabia in February, and in addition to sending over guys like Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan and Mark Henry (and their superstars of Middle Eastern descent, which is what, Damien Sandow?), they’re sending over Cena. Of course they are. Cena is synonymous with the company and basically ten Hulk Hogans standing on each others’ shoulders.
This is great news for WWE fans in the country, but not the upset adult male fans like Okaz columnist Khaled Al Suleiman. His rant about why John Cena should not be allowed in his country is pitch-perfect, and may as well have come from one of my Best and Worst columns. Pretend this is flanked by a paragraph about how the least famous guy on the show is great and some giant screencaps of Renee Young:
“John Cena…you are not welcome here…a few years ago I could have said you are welcome but my bitter experience with my children and their obsession with John Cena have made me loathsome to the idea of his coming…to stop him from coming, I am even ready to face him in the ring although such an idea is suicidal,” he said.
“He will hit me with a shoulderblock, of this I am sure, but I will rise quickly. Another shoulderblock will knock me down, and the very idea of throwing a wild haymaker is ridiculous, as he will simply duck and Protobomb me onto my back. From there, I will be unable to see him as he disgustingly bounces off the ropes, brushes blasphemous American dust from his shoulder and drops his fist from shoulder-height onto my forehead.”
Sorry, continue.
“Over the past years, my home has been turned into a wrestling ring where human bodies fly around and pillows are thrown all over as screams do not stop as if my home became Madison Square in New York…during those years, the shelves, walls and drawers in my home have been filled with pictures of wrestlers and their frightening bodies…now they are coming to control our minds at our home…you are not welcome…what we, adults and children, need is not a wrestling ring to engage in savage and horrifying fights, but a stage where all the talented compete to demonstrate their human skills and nature not savagery.” (via Emirates 24/7)
This guy really hates Brawling Buddies, I guess. I really hope John Cena starts off the first Saudi show by saying, “I hear Khaled Al Suleiman doesn’t like me. Says I’m ruining his children. Well, some of you like me and some of you don’t! You pay your hard earned money to be entertained!” and then Suleiman just compromises himself to a permanent end.
