John Cena : the most hated 'Good Guy' on earth. (Vice Article)

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Imagine an athlete whose entire ethos is helping others.

He speaks about it incessantly in interviews and prides himself on doing the right thing, to the point where doing the right thing more or less becomes his public persona. He ensures that his employers brand all his merchandise accordingly, and every time he competes he makes sure to chuck multiple items of his game-worn gear into the crowd. Oftentimes, those go to kids, which makes sense; they adore him and he goes very far out of his way to meet with and spend time with them, perhaps a hundred times in a given year.

He does not attribute any of this to religious reasons or any other agenda; there is no accompanying rider about why anyone should ascribe to his personal belief system. He does it because he thinks it's the right thing to do and it makes him happy to help other people. There is very little skepticism about all of this, either: it is almost universally accepted that little to none of this is bullshite and that our athlete is, in fact, a pretty swell guy. On top of this, he happens to be among the very best in his sport, someone who works exceedingly hard to elevate his actual performance—which was once lacking—to a level on par with his fame. This athlete would be the paragon of everything society wants its athletes to be.

Such an athlete exists. His name is John Cena, and people fricking hate him.

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The wider world, doesn't know much about this. Cena has a broad reach, but wrestling's place in the zeitgeist ain't what it was around the turn of the century, when The Rock was hosting Saturday Night Live and starring in The Scorpion King while still working as an active wrestler; until this year, Cena's biggest non-wrestling commercial success was the k-list action flick The Marine. 2015 has changed things in a big way, first through Cena's one-off appearance on Parks and Recreation and now with a fairly well-regarded role in Trainwreck, the new Amy Schumer vehicle. This week, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, Cena cracked SportsCenter as part of its My Wish series, which makes sense given that Cena is the runaway record-holder for most requests fulfilled for the Make A Wish Foundation— the astonishing tally is over 460, and counting.* Everything is in place for mainstream America to love John Cena, genetically engineered He-Man with a heart and a sense of humor, a mountainous man who can be trusted to utter the perfect soundbyte at the optimal time without any cause for dread at what lurks underneath that Lysol-clean exterior.

His constituency in pro wrestling, on the other hand, mostly wants him to go away.

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