To Bling, or Not to Bling...

April 3, 2005.
Los Angeles, California:

Before 20,193 souls, and a million more at home watching on Pay-Per-View, John Felix Anthony Cena defeats John Bradshaw Layfield to win his first ever World Wrestling Entertainment Heavyweight Championship. His first act as title holder: a radically customized re-imagining of the WWE Championship Belt.

Gone from around the new Champ's waist were the metalized image of a gleaming mother earth. Gone; the belt stripped of its illustrious inscribed plates of prestigious title lineages. All gone.

Now hanging above Mr. Cena's sagging trousers and carefully revealed boxers was the new WWE Title Belt, Cena's very own "pimped" out version of WWE Championship Gold. Bedecked with rankly ostentatious "Bling Bling", and improbably fronted by a rotating face plate bejeweled in World Wrestling Entertainment's "...get the 'F' out..." logo, Mr. Cena's new "Spinner Belt" was unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Say what you will about the apparent insult to a cherished championship image, yet remember that a personalized brush has rarely been spared by other WWE Superstars' title reigns: The Stone Cold "Smoking Skull" Belt, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's "Brahma Bull" WWE Championship Title, even Brock Lesnar's "Undisputed Title", all sported cutomized faces. Yet no redesign could be argued to have undergone as quite an (as to quote an as-of-late-oft-used phrase) "extreme" makeover.

Much can and, of course, cannot be said of John Cena's nearly unheard of year long WWE title reign. And dear reader(s), I believe in the polite and erudite forum of ArabianFaceBuster.blogspot.com I shall henceforth avoid any further discussion of Mr. Cena's in- ring WWE wrestling acumen and ability to shoulder, wacky or otherwise, the immense burden of his role as its champion.

But that belt. That belt. No, it's not the charming abbreviation loyalizing the champ as part of "Mon-Nite Raw" on one of the rhinestone crusted side plates. Nor do I even blanche at the faux-diamond "CHAMP" outrageously festooning the belt's face. You see, dear friends, it is specifically that jewel encrusted, loopily spinning,"W" where I draw my truck with "The Champ" and his "Bling-Bling-Belt". Yes, much like a wobbly sorority girl stumbling drunk and easy through a Fraternity house post- two a.m. on a Thursday nite, Mr. Cena’s Bling-Belt either entices the viewer with its cheap and sloppy luster or it repels him with its utter triteness and lack of historical substance.

Perhaps, in his haste to procure the illustrious gleam of championship gold around his self, Mr Cena did not gather into his employ the finest tinkerers, or jewelers, or other assorted craftsmen to ensure the integrity of this golden revolving bauble to the cult of the new Champ. Oh, indeed the jeweled WWE Logo spins ever so delightfully! Round and round it goes, as if twirling with the carefree whims of a Cadillac Escalade's 22's idling through the 'hood on a balmy South Central Friday afternoon.

And yet inevitably, when the spinning slows and eventually ceases, that lovely logo always, and by always I mean ALWAYS [caps added for emphasis] always, lays askance. Never upright. Never to be properly vertical, but always slightly tilted, perhaps to the two o'clock position, or even worse, upside down as if it were an "M".

Perhaps this racous tilt of derision towards an established corporate logo jives nicely with the image of an "unorthodox" anti-establishmentarian like Mr. Cena and his rowdy Chain Gang.

Or perhaps it simply illustrates the nearsighted priorities of an massive entertainment conglomerate that will strip its aesthetically competent double champion of his titles after he is discovered traveling in a vehicle with a suicidal, homicidal, genocidal Arab, and a harmless herb that happens to be illegal in some states. And yet somehow still allows its multi-million dollar, courtroom-battled- over Logo to be subject to such piss poor handiwork and an outright failure to find its literate vertical base.

Perhaps one day there will come a new champion, a true champion, who recognizes the importance of the little details, and sets right this off-kilter bejeweled affront.

Whatever the cause, it is now clear that regardless of who holds Mr. Cena's customized Title, we will be forced to witness this continued witless act of canted corporate logo placement.

Regrettably to fans of shiny things everywhere, as long as little girls’ screams of shrill delight prompt countless-a-fanboy to purchase their very own replicated chunk of Bling-Bling-Belt from either venue merchants or wwe.shopzone.com, we will be subject to its shoddy machinations and watch it spin, spin, again, and again.