• John Cena Explains How WWE Benefited By Turning PG
During a recent interview with The Independent, 16 time WWE World Heavyweight Champion John Cena discussed WWE being TV PG and how it has benefited the WWE. Below are the highlights:
So there’s the kids out there loving the WWE, but there’s also a circle of perhaps more geeky older people who’ll always be saying, “Oh we miss the Attitude Era” and that kind of stuff. What is your response to that, do you think that’s misplaced nostalgia or do you see that as a legitimate response?
“Well, every response is legitimate. If you tell me right now you miss the Attitude Era I can’t tell you you don’t. What I can tell you is that we’re a PG program and if you look at the Attitude Era it was TV-14 or TV-MA. We’re a PG program, there’s nothing else I can tell you.
There will be no cussing, there will be no blood, there will be no headshots, there will be no inappropriate clothing, and those aren’t our laws those are the laws of the rating system. So to operate under a PG platform, which has totally globally expanded the WWE and created more fans – albeit geeky or not geeky – around the world, and allowed all of these performers including myself to go to new and wonderful places, like places in South America, China for the first time, we keep returning to Japan, the Arab Emirates – just because we have made our program more digestible.
I totally understand, as a 40-year-old man, and if you’ve seen me in Trainwreck I have a pretty adult sense of humor, I totally understand someone saying, ‘I miss mature content in sports entertainment’. We are not the place for that. We are not. And that’s our business model. And until it changes I am merely a carpenter building with the tools that are given to me.
Is a promo easier when you can cuss? Sure, because you’re talking trash and trash talk is filled with cusses. But, as a professional, you can’t speculate and be like, ‘Ugh, I wish I could just say this,’ because you can’t, those are the rules, and every once in a while we can walk the line and push into grey, but at the end of the day the program is PG and has to be treated as such because that’s the business model of the folks who own the place.”
And that’s a price worth paying to be able to reach more people worldwide?
“Yeah, and as the global audience continues to expand – it happens with everything; if you have a garage band that gets a massively passionate fan base and that garage band ends up playing stadiums, there’s a group of people that hate them for that.
But you want to take your product and get it out to as many people as you can – my WWE mission statement isn’t to be a 17-time champion or whatever, it’s to get as many eyeballs on the ring as I possibly can, because I love the WWE so much, I think we have the best gig in town, so I want everybody to watch it.
So my success or failure in the ring in a win or loss perspective is irrelevant, if winning more will help me get more eyeballs fine, if being PG will help me get more eyeballs, fine. I wanna do stadiums every show, I don’t want to just do it for WrestleMania – do stadiums every show and have a show on the moon and a show on Mars.
That’s how dedicated I am to expanding the audience, because the more you get the word out, especially with something like WWE that transcends language. If I don’t know what they’re saying in the promos, I know by the body language that I like this guy or I don’t, and this guy doesn’t like that guy, and that’s why we can go all these places and it’s such a global success, it’s one of the few forms of entertainment that transcends culture, language, race, religion – anything.”
• Top Indy Tag Team Coming To WWE Soon
Wrestling Observer noted that WWE officials are interested in signing ROH tag team War Machine. At the recent ROH TV Tapings, War Machine bowed to the crowd after their match and this began speculation that they’re leaving ROH and coming to WWE.
Dave Meltzer is now reporting that War Machine is going through medical testing to get signed by the WWE. War Machine will be working the NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 12 event on January 4, 2018, so they might make their debut on NXT during the WrestleMania 34 season.
Word going on is that they might feud with NXT Tag Team Champions Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish of the Undisputed Era.
