I have to admit that I’m a little surprised at how much mainstream media coverage the breakup between John Cena and Nikki Bella has been, because no matter how big or small wrestling gets, performers in the industry seldom make any mainstream media unless it involves them dying or they’re The Rock.
I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised that this happened because ultimately I don’t believe that people are really capable of change without some traumatic or life-altering instances happening in their lives, and considering John Cena’s life and career has been mostly the same over the last decade, I’m pretty sure that regardless of what ear candy he’s said about having changed towards the ideas of marriage and children, he really hasn’t. As much as sucks for Nikki Bella or any person who has to endure a breakup with a long-term love, it’s hard to say that John Cena wasn’t being transparent about his attitudes towards certain things, for quite some time now.
Sure, it’s probably a dick move that he proposed and let this roller coaster ascend to the heights it did mostly because of the fact that Cena is a moment-junkie, in the sense that he’s completely sold on the notion that Wrestlemania is where “moments are made,” and he probably went a little too far in the pursuit of a moment and proposed marriage despite the fact that he was against marriage, but frankly as much as it sucks right now, it’s probably for the best that they ended things now instead of after being married and possibly with kids that also Cena would have been against in the first place. Sure, Cena would have obviously protected himself with a pre-nuptual, because he wouldn’t even let Nikki move in without any sort of contract, much less married her, but divorce regardless is undoubtedly messier than a breakup between non-spouses.
At first blush, my knee-jerk reaction to this news was that it was the seeds to what could possibly be the first real swerve towards an audience beyond just the wrestling fanbase, considering that both John Cena and Nikki Bella have transcended the wrestling industry with movies and their reality television shows. If the WWE played their cards right, it would be a golden opportunity to get people outside of wrestling fans to possibly tune into flagship programming and/or tie themselves into WWE Network subscriptions, because they’re drama junkies eager to see the blurred reality of the fallout of their breakup – but in the ring.
Now more level-headed thinking probably understands that this is probably more on the side of reality, since despite his in-ring persona, John Cena is barely anything other than a robotic tool, moldable to promotion and malleable to anything that can continue to make him look like a superstar, and getting married and being strong-armed into having kids would definitely compromise his stardom potential.
The thing is, this is probably not a work – but it totally should be. Or at least, if Cena and Nikki Bella were strong enough, the scenario should so totally be used for a long-term storyline, that could accomplish all sorts of things, that could involve other players, most notably the freshly-returned Daniel Bryan and his wife and sister to Nikki, Brie Bella.
So after a week or two of laying low, John Cena returns to television, to earth-shattering boos; but not the ironic boos that mask a hidden appreciation of his talent, longevity and crowd appeal, but legitimate, X-Pac Heat hate boos, like the ones Edge and Lita got after their affair was outed. But instead of “you screwed Matt (Hardy),” the crowd is chanting “You screwed Nikki!” and Cena is hardly capable of pretending like the chants can’t be heard or ignored. There are no arrogant smirks or shrugs of indifference, and Cena looks around at the WWE Universe™ with a look of confusion and betrayal.
And when Cena grabs a mic, the boos reign down from the rafters all over again, and again, and every time he raises the mic to his face, he gets the Roman Reigns treatment where the fans crank up the boos to try and drown out whatever he has to say. This goes on for like 4-6 minutes before Cena powers through and just tries to cut a promo that ignores reality and starts talking about how he got his ass whipped by the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 34.
BUT THEN, Brie Bella’s music hits and she comes down to the ring with a purpose. No hamming it up to the crowd, no pointing at little girls or doing any YES chants. Her face is not of anger, but of disappointment and sadness. Cena looks uncomfortable upon seeing his ex’s slightly thinner, less-endowed twin sister march into the ring, and the crowd is cheering Brie, at appreciation for her return and her representation of her distraught sister. Brie grabs a mic, and then proceeds to light into Cena over what he did to her sister, about how he’s a liar and an ego-maniac.
After 1-2 minutes of being lit into by Brie Bella, Cena tries to defend himself and rebut, but Brie manages to do the impossible and talks over and talks down to John Cena, and continues with her berating, and how he probably should have never strung her along with a relationship much less an engagement, if at his core he never wanted marriage or children. Frustrated at being unable to get a word in, Cena tries to grab Brie’s mic, but she will not let go without saying her peace, boiling over, Cena wrenches hard, wrestles the mic out of Brie’s hands, but at the expense of knocking her down to the mat. Cena looks down in horror at physically imposing his will onto a woman, Brie looks up in shock at that a man she thought was going to be her brother-in-law would go this far. The WWE Universe is booing like mad at this point.
BUT THEN! Daniel Bryan’s music hits! The WWE Universe explodes and goes ballistic! Daniel Bryan shoots out from the back, sprinting down to the ring. He soars underneath the bottom rope and is immediately at the side of his downed wife. Cena backs up, arms outstretched, trying to emote misunderstandings and apologies. Bryan helps Brie back up to her feet, and the two of them look at Cena with shock and disappointment in their faces. Here stands a man that was on the cusp of being a part of their happy, growing family. Cena slowly brings the mic up to his mouth, as the fans in attendance try once again to drown out whatever words he plans on saying.
AND THEN DANIEL BRYAN RUNS UP AND DELIVERS A MASSIVE DROPKICK! Down goes Cena! Bryan rains down the rights and lefts onto the man that struck his wife. He plants a barrage of kicks onto Cena with his educated feet. The crowd is going gonzo throughout this whole assault. Satisfied, Bryan goes back to Brie and holds up the middle rope for her to exit the ring. Cena gets back to his knees and grabs the mic and says “hold on,” and then just like that, Daniel Bryan is back on top of him, delivering the YES kicks™, knocking Cena out cold with the charged right leg.
The crowd is continuing to go bananas, with the biggest YES chant since Bryan swerved Bray Wyatt and beat the shit out of him in a steel cage.
In ensuing weeks, Cena tries to make amends with Daniel Bryan and Brie Bella. First over the publicly seen social media accounts, that they’ll talk about on the flagship television shows. But Brie and Bryan want nothing to do with John Cena and no-sell him. Then, Cena will grab the mic after squash matches against guys he’s burying like No Way Jose and Baron Corbin, to try and ask Brie and Bryan if the can talk sometime. Failing that, Cena begins interrupting other peoples’ matches like when the cruiserweights get a rare match on RAW where he’ll jump in the ring, hit Mustafa Ali and Cedric Alexander with some AA’s, take the mic and plead with Brie and Bryan to talk to him. And naturally, the crowd is absolutely loathing the further over-saturation of Cena, booing all the same, not even bothering to do the lame Let’s Go Cena-Cena Sucks chant anymore.
Eventually, Daniel Bryan will be in the process of climbing back up the ladder of contention, and in a critical number one contender four-corner match against Rusev, Randy Orton and Jinder Mahal, it will look like Bryan will be on the cusp of winning, until John Cena comes down the ramp to talk, and distracts him just long enough for Orton to hit an RKO out of nowhere and win the match because Randy Orton always wins.
The following week on RAW, John Cena and Daniel Bryan finally confront for the first time since the initial beat down. Cena proceeds to act like he’s some sort of pariah just because he doesn’t want to get married or have children, while Daniel Bryan extols the importance of family and how Cena hurt his sister-in-law. After about 17 minutes of talking, it looks like the two are able to agree to disagree, but then Bryan brings up the fact that Cena did actually cost him a championship match, and that there are sour grapes over it. They agree to have a friendly, competitive match at SummerSlam, based on the nostalgia of where Daniel Bryan cleanly beat Cena for the WWE Championship a few years ago.
At SummerSlam, Bryan looks like he might beat Cena once again, but at a critical moment in the match, due to Cena’s Hulk-like strength is able to swing a YES-lock into a counter to the STF(U). After Cena pulls Bryan back to the center of the ring and re-applies the STF(U), it looks like Bryan is going to tap or pass out UNTIL! Bah gawd, that’s Nikki Bella’s music! For the first time since the breakup, we’re seeing Nikki Bella! Cena immediately lets go of the STF(U), and immediately tries to talk with Nikki, giving Bryan critical time to recover. The argument is starting to get heated between Nikki and Cena, and suddenly Nikki rears her hand back to deliver a slap, but instead hits Daniel Bryan who was coming from behind to presumably deliver a German suplex, when Cena ducks. Nikki jumps off the apron covering her mouth in shock escaping to the back, while Cena delivers an AA to a dazed Daniel Bryan, and gets the win.
Eventually, there is a rematch at the Royal Rumble, where Daniel Bryan is accompanied to the ring by both Bellas. But towards the end of the match, out of nowhere Nikki plasters Brie, leading to a moment of shock and hesitation from Daniel Bryan. And that’s all that’s needed for John Cena to capitalize on the distraction to hit Bryan with another AA and forcing him to tap out to the STF(U) while facing Brie, being held in a chokehold by her nefarious evil twin sister.
After the match, it’s revealed that it was a swerve all along! John Cena and Nikki Bella staged the whole breakup in order to get put into a high-profile feud that would catapult them to the top of the card for the better part of a year, because Cena was at a new low after jobbing to the Undertaker and Nikki hadn’t been on television for nearly a year.
They’ve turned heel!
The payoff happens at Wrestlemania, where there’s a mixed tag match between Bryan and Brie versus Cena and Nikki. The match ends with Bryan neutralizing Cena with the knee while Brie gets Nikki to tap to the YES-lock.
And after that match, Nikki breaks up with John this time, giving her closure to their marriage-less, baby-less relationship, and John Cena vanishes for six months to go film some crappy movie. Daniel Bryan, after a year back from injury is now ready to be put back into the contender picture, and Brie is content to get off the road and get back to being a mom.
The following wrestling fanfiction fulfills such goals as elevating Daniel Bryan back to a top-tier status, successfully turning John Cena heel, while giving the Bella Twins one last hurrah on television. The timeline stretches from now until next year’s Wrestlemania. and keeps both Cena and Bryan away from any title contention, leaving the belts open for the guys that really should actually be fighting for them over the next calendar year.
Considering the WWE’s willingness to take even the most uncomfortable real-life scenarios and turn them into storyline for the benefit of the company, there’s no guarantee that something like this couldn’t happen. It’s a shame that the brog is still down, and not even my zero viewers much less any chance at WWE Creative could ever see this, because I’ll be very amused if anything remotely close to this actually begins to take shape within the next year.
