That night, there I was in in the Squared Circle in Chicago, grappling with myself about why I didn’t like John Cena when I should.
No, not the Squared Circle you’re thinking, my friend. This is a bar restaurant on 2418 North Ashland Avenue in Chicago, near the long stretch of Kennedy Expressway and its run of traffic that seems to go into eternity. Place for fans and wrestlers alike, with framed championship belts and Lucha masks and even entire costume gear and autographs on the walls from all the wrestlers who visit.
Lisa Marie Varon runs it, yeah, her: Victoria in the WWE but I mostly knew her as Tara on TNA Impact, riding that high-power motorcycle hog she used to enter the ring that had a tarantula in a glass jar on the back.
Lisa is good people, my friend. Real cool, all smiles, welcomes everyone into the Squared Circle, always happy to tell stories about her time in the ring, heaping the praise on her fellow wrestlers, her comrades forever more.
Anyway, there I was, nursing an adult beverage, really bothered by this dream I had had the other night about Cena. So bothered, I called in my shrink to meet me there, guy name of Dr. Stevie, who specializes in pro wrestling phobias, especially what he called “the jobber syndrome”, where his patient went crazy wanting to “win by always losing”, or something like that.
So this Dr. Stevie, after he comes in and sits down, I start telling him about this John Cena dream thing I’m having.
“What John Cena dream thing?” says Dr. Stevie, staring at a framed costume of Macho Man Randy Savage on a wall across the way. “When did these feelings of conflict first surface?”
“Has to do with this dream,” I says, “where John Cena was saying how he, by his lonesome, had killed off Osama Bin Laden.”
“The greatest heel in the world, yes, go on.”
“Okay, in this dream I’m telling you about, Cena makes his entrance into the ring with that Arriba-Arriba sounding song of his. Wearing his shirt with ‘Hustle, Loyalty, Respect’ on it and his trademarked baseball hat.”
“Yes, his archetypal armor. Go on.”
“Okay, then Cena, he brays out that Osama is dead, he throws his hat into the audience and tears off his shirt like the Hulkster used to do. Next, he’s standing there with all that bulk of muscle on him, saying how he killed off the guy: parachuted into where Osama was holed up, bitch slapped the guards, and found Osama sitting there on the couch, watching porno.”
“Did he say what kind of erotic material?”
“I think something about a paradise of nude virgins, whatever. Anyway, Cena next says he put a sleeper hold on Osama, knocks him out. And drags him out to a black helicopter that takes them to an aircraft carrier where Cena says he wraps an old American flag around the corpse and body slams it into the ocean.”
“Quite vivid imagery.”
“You’re telling me. Then Cena, he gives out one of his snappy Gung Ho military salutes of his.”
I then take a sip of my adult beverage and I says: “So next night, I have this other dream. With this big bearded guy, heavy on the tattoos, wearing one of those porkpie hats and a Hawaii shirt. Standing in front of two, tall hillbilly goons who have on plastic white sheep masks. Now this guy, he starts into raving like some kind of mad preacher baptizing souls in a swamp and throwing out this mysterious laugh-giggle and he’s . . . he’s going after Cena. And I mean, really going after him. He’s a beast, a monster, he tells lies behind his porcelain smile. And how he’s going to slay this monster of a beast using his finishing move as his sword. Something he calls his Sister Abigail.”
“She is the muse of this man named Bray Wyatt,” says Dr. Stevie, folding his hands on the bar top and putting his eyes on me. “I take it you are not watching WWE these days, eh?”
I sighed. “No, not since that woman Paige beat my favorite wrestler AJ Lee in an upset and took her belt,” I says. “Remember me telling you about that nightmare?”
“Yes, I recall it now,” says Dr. Stevie “Well now, you seem to be suffering from a side effect of the jobber syndrome. Where the jobber is neither babyface nor heel. Their existence of being is to lose, under the delusion they can somehow win in their futility.”
“Sure, I know all that, but what does it have to do with . . .”
He interrupted me and started into drumming a finger on the bar top to tap out his points: “So obsessed is the sufferer with the role of babyface and heel that when a paradigm shift occurs in such a traditional identification of a wrestler, the syndrome worsens. Here we turn to the case of John Cena.”
“It’s about time.”
Dr. Stevie shrugged me off and continued: “You see, the whole significance of that gesture for which he is especially known, the wiping over the face with an open palm, this so-called ‘you can’t see me’, is symbolic: wiping off the babyface to seek the attainment of pure hero, to never go heel.”
“I guess I’m following you.”
“But this goes against the destiny of the babyface. For the Manichean imperative is to, at some point, go heel much like how the baby-faced Hulk Hogan eventually turned heel when he joined the New World Order in World Championship Wrestling.
“But not so with John Cena. The more he sought the role of pure hero, the deeper the shadow he cast. And who should inevitably arise from this shadow but Bray Wyatt.”
“So I’m thinking, this Wyatt has become the heel that Cena wasn’t ever going to be?”
“Not exactly.”
“So how you going to explain it then, doc?”
“First, I am assigning homework to you,” says Dr. Stevie. “As your psychiatrist, I advise you to attend the live show this coming weekend, for the showdown between the Cena ubermensch and Bray Wyatt.”
“Whatever you say, doc,” I says.
So later on, I started asking around to see if someone could car pool me out to the wilds of the suburbs to see the show. And Lisa herself later told me, she said, yeah, the Squared Circle was running a party bus out to the Allstate Arena where the battle lines were drawn.
And I tell her: I am so there.
***
All right, in the Allstate Arena, there were a ton of marks, split between what Cena called his C-Nation and what Wyatt called his Fireflies, because they held up their lit smartphones in the dark as Wyatt and his two redneck goons made their entrance.
That night, it was to the tune of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” sung by this choir of black-robed children wearing plastic white sheep masks behind him. Way cool, I thought, this sly dig at Cena’s self-worshipping efforts for some kids charity or other. Now look, I know I should have liked his helping sad, unfortunate kids, but, for real, do you have to flash your porcelain smile to the cameras while you’re doing it?
Well, whatever. The match was what one of my favorite wrestlers name of Baron Von Rashke might have called sturm und drang: a slug and slam fest: Cena’s streamlined muscles vs. Bray Wyatt, this tattooed power pudge.
Except that, well, Bray Wyatt was cackling and wicked-smiling through the whole bash. Even after Cena came out of Bray’s finisher: that head-kiss, body-twist into the mat he called the Sister Abigail, and he did it twice. Best move of the match: Wyatt sticks the iron steps into the ring now in the ring into Cena’s abs: Cena’s lying there on the mat and Wyatt climbs up the side of the stairs to conduct the Fireflies in a note-perfect version of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”.
And me, I sang along and chanted “Cena Sucks” with the Wyatt marks Even if, deep down, I knew I was going against God, Mother, Apple Pie, and Moving the Merch.
Eventually, Cena won out by throwing Bray Wyatt outside the ring into a tower of speakers then dropping him into some kind of open container box, then lifting up a speaker and hauling it on the top of the box, like sealing a tomb.
End of feud.
Well, okay, I was thinking walking out of there, it wasn’t like this backwoods cult leader speaking evil gibberish was going to make any kind of poster boy for the WWE by sending Cena into the box himself. No, WWE just couldn’t keep selling plastic white sheep masks to kids out there: they needed Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect, keep them honest.
So, what are you going to do about Bray Wyatt then? Straight into matches where there’s no what you call “moral quandaries” to warp people. In other words, dooming all that evil cackling of his to the mids. So that, in the end, Randy Orton would torch him and Sister Abigail in some kind of evil dungeon match that had everyone joking how phony it all looked.
So Bray Wyatt was history. And Cena, he continued his march to immortal glory, or whatever.
At least, that’s what I thought … until I had another fierce dream, leaving me dazed and confused like Robert Plant screaming out those old Led Zep metal blues. Time for another session with Dr. Stevie at, where else, but the Squared Circle?
“It’s like this, doc,” I says to him. “Now I’m dreaming that Bray Wyatt is in something like a mash up of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
“I suspect Cena’s appeal to children triggered an aspect of the jobber syndrome in your brain,” he says. “A traumatic memory from when you were a child, when you saw a favorite wrestler lose, and feared they would forever lose.”
“Whatever, well, Wyatt didn’t have his beard now and his hair was in a bun on top of his head. ‘I’m sorry for what I did,’ he says. ‘You forgive me, right?’”
“Which you did, of course.”
“You know me,” I says, “the forgiving type. Anyway, Bray then says ‘we are going to have such fun in my Firefly Funhouse’ and then introduces all these puppets in there. There was a bunny puppet, and an angry bird puppet, an old crone in the window wearing a black dress like she just stepped out of the grave …
“Not an old crone,” says Dr. Stevie. “That is already implied in the very word, ‘crone’.
“Whatever you say, doc.”
He cleared his throat, took a drink of ice water, and continued: “This manifestation of puppetry is meant to symbolize aspects of the persona of Bray Wyatt. I suspect the crone is Sister Abigail, his muse.”
“Yowie Wowie, I think you have something there.”
“Part of my training,” he says, “continue with your narrative.”
“So Bray Wyatt is carrying on with the puppets and all and doing arts and crafts, stuff like painting a picture of Sister Abigail in flames, just like . . . oh, what’s her name?”
“Joan of Arc.”
“Yeah, like her. Then, all of a sudden, the playhouse goes creepy dark and instead of Sister Abigail in the window, there’s this Cena puppet. Ball cap, t-shirt with a saying . . . oh what was it . . . I remember, it said: Duty Now, for the Future.”
“From the band Devo,” says Dr. Stevie. “A favorite of my patients.”
“And Bray, he looks at the Cena puppet and says, “why John, welcome to the Firefly Funhouse for:
Your.
Special.
Surprise.
Party.
Guest.’
“And you know what happens next? You know about that guy Jason in the Halloween movies?”
“Jason Voorhees. And if I ever wanted someone as my patient . . . ”
“This creature like Jason is in a basement but, instead of the hockey mask, it’s like the plastic white sheep mask is now iron and it’s welded over his face. And he’s trying to yank it off and he’s screaming over and over again: Hustle, Respect, Honor, Hustle, Respect, Honor.”
“I see.”
I turned my head to Dr. Stevie and I remember the sight of terror going through my eyes. “Help me, doc,” I says. “I think I’m losing my mind over John Cena and this creature Bray called The Freako.”
And you know what Dr. Stevie did then? There was a wall-sized TV screen across from us where the Squared Circle usually shows old wrestling matches. That night, the screen was strangely blank. Well, Dr. Stevie, he snaps the fingers of both hands at it and, then comes:
Blurred images of The Freako haunting a shaken John Cena and he’s saying “I will not panic, I’m not afraid.” A devilish hissing comes out of The Freako like from the cries of the possessed. Then the Firehouse Funhouse theme music. And Bray is in the funhouse, saying there’s another world that exists outside the realm of Cena and that he must face up to his greatest danger yet. Then a mix up of wrestling films like Kurt Angle screaming ‘it’s real all right, it’s damn real’ and Cena starts swinging in the air at Angle but he’s not there and you see Bray again, and he’s saying “Is this what you want to do with your life?” And Cena, he goes through past life regression: pumping iron real fast, acting like Hogan in the New World Order, rapper Cena as the Doctor of Thuganomics and wearing heavy chains and he’s rapping these weird lyrics: ‘always fits the bill … he comes well prepared … cube top, squared off, eight corners, 90-degree angles … flat top, stares straight ahead … stock parts … blockhead’ as the puppets dance in a circle around him and Bray Wyatt he appears again and he’s laughing away, dressed up like swamp preacher Bray as a referee in a squared circle where The Freako appears behind Cena’s shoulder and throttles him with a spiked glove in the mouth before giving him the Sister Abigail finisher. Cena falls to the floor and, pop and whiz, vanishes then materializes in a kitchen, looking into an open trash can that he’s sniffing at what lies at the bottom of a black rubber bag: his archetypal armor: crushed hat, torn t-shirt, ripped up arm bands, now hot trash.
“Shock treatment,” says Dr. Stevie, with a smile.
“Hey, it worked,” I says. “My brain feels clean. It’s okay I don’t like John Cena, and it’s a good thing.”
“Explain to me how it happened.”
I think about it, and, out of the blue, something comes out of me: “Leaving nothing in the shadow, each action discards all parasitic meanings and ceremonially offers to the public a pure and full signification, rounded like Nature. This grandiloquence is nothing but the popular and age-old image of the perfect intelligibility of reality.”
To that, Dr. Stevie says, with a shrug: “What you going to do, when Roland Barthes runs wild over you?”
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