John Cena was recently interviewed by Jimmy Traina on the SI Media Podcast. Cena spoke on a wide variety of topics during the interview, including his feud last year with Roman Reigns.
Cena explained why Reigns has it tough in WWE. This was in regards to the current audience. Here is what he said (quotes below via Fightful):
“Roman has it tough. I kind of ruined this for everybody…the content, the format change did. Attitude Era was male 18 to 35. And our program still draws males 18 to 35. But we’re a PG program. Which means you’re audience is a six year old. I don’t say don’t cater to the male 18 to 35, but your audience starts at six or younger. So you have to give them essentially Shrek or Cars or the Lego Movie. Sometimes, 18 to 35 year old dudes don’t want to watch the Lego Movie. You have to try to push, but don’t think there’s not a second in my mind that our audience isn’t six.
Our audience is so mixed that there’s never going to be a good guy that appeals to everyone. Even if it’s someone that the fans endorse and become the guy. It’s a thing where the fans are like, ‘Okay, you as a company are going with this guy? No you’re not because we get choose.’ When Roman was with The Shield, everybody loved him. He didn’t really change much. He was soft-spoken, his actions spoken for him, he performs incredibly well. Yet there’s a giant uprising because a lot of it is, ‘You can’t tell us what to like.’ And that’s okay. It’s just tough waters to navigate as a company and it’s tough to build stars.”
Cena also added the following:
“You have to look at your consumers and the analytics. People really like Roman Reigns. And the numbers are there to prove it.”
Your thoughts on his comments?
In other news, here are some of the highest-rated matches of Roman Reigns’ career (which includes Cena vs Reigns).