Then The Rock would have never owned Cena's soul.
...but joking aside... as huge as Cena became, I always think this is pretty much the same what if as "What if Hogan wouldn't be around for the 80s/90s". There are not that few people, who'd argue they would've just pushed someone else to the moon and the talent for that was there. I feel like it's the same with Cena. He was still such a non-factor in 2002... we would've just seen someone else becoming Vince's guy couple of years later and with how untouchable the WWE pretty much was around that time, it wouldn't have mattered as much, if the new Vince-guy didn't had quite the Cena run.
That might be true, it probably would have resulted in even a bigger push for Randy Orton.
But my question I think even goes farther than just how WWE would have done. Of all the top guys of all time, Cena really put people ever on the latter half of his career and arguably pushed those guys to another level (only Ric Flair I guess could compare). Cena used his top guy status and helped CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Kevin Owens, and AJ Styles break through the glass ceiling. If the wrong guy gets put in that slot, does that still happen? To use the Hogan comparison, it's like if Hogan went ahead and put over Bret Hart at Summerslam '93, and also put over Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon too. Does that help the WWF in '93 and on? I know Cena gets a (justified) bad rap about Nexus, but after that he put over everyone big time.
I also wonder if the Rock returns in 2011 for the Cena series. Obviously almost impossible to say with the butterfly effect. but is there a guy who could have slid into Cena's spot to be that big a star? Does Randy Orton work in that spot? Does the WWF try harder to keep Lesnar around in '04?
