Jon Stewart Gets Body-Slammed In Brooklyn By Pro Wrestler John Cena
Aug. 25, 2015, 10:16 a.m.
They don't call this move the Attitude Adjustment for nothing.
Last night, on the WWE's Monday Night Raw, as your humble narrator predicted yesterday morning, Jon Stewart reappeared in the ring for the pro wrestling franchise at the Barclays Center. Stewart hosted Sunday's SummerSlam, and stunned fans when he turned the tide in a double title match by bashing kid favorite John Cena in the gut with a chair. Video of his latest encounter with Cena is below, and it's easy to get lost if you don't follow wrestling, but the final exchange leading up to Cena giving Stewart his finishing move, called the Attitude Adjustment, starts around the 4:00 mark.
Here's that move again, in a GIF helpfully provided by the WWE:
"Right now, I'm just gonna do what I HAVE to do..." - @JohnCena to Jon Stewart #RAW #DownGoesStewart #SummerSlam pic.twitter.com/SSaY2GQJPL
— WWE (@WWE) August 25, 2015
A very basic summary of what's going on here: Cena is beloved by kids and hated by many adult wrestling fans—plenty of whom were at the Barclays Center the last two nights booing him—for his Boston-hip-hop GI Joe shtick and real-life WWE management's obsession with putting him in the center of all the story lines. Wrestling-world Stewart is serving as a sort of stand-in for these discerning fans, called smarks, short for "smart marks." But in pure, Platonic wrestling terms, he is a bad guy, a heel, for attacking the good guy.
Stewart's rationale for the attack, explained last night on Raw, was that he didn't want to see Cena tie WWE legend Ric Flair's record for world championship title wins. What this does for the WWE is set Cena up, like Fox News so often does for wealthy white people, as the underdog, perpetually torn down by irrational forces beyond his control. Cena is now perfectly positioned for yet another ascent to the top through pure hard work and determination like the English land barons of yore. To get there, he'll have to take on the corporate goons of The Authority, a stable of bad guys helmed by WWE executives Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, who got where they are not by their bootstraps, but by unabashed Old-World nepotism (Stephanie is the daughter of company owner Vince; Triple H is her husband). Here's Seth Rollins, who Cena lost to on Sunday, gloating with Triple H:
One more weird layer to all of this is that, by beating up Jon Stewart, a shlubby, small 52-year-old, Cena exacted violence on a defenseless person outside of scheduled combat. Rule-breaking of this sort is heel behavior, making Cena even more despicable in the eyes of wrestling classicists who strut around their apartments going, "Wooo!" whenever Ric Flair or his daughter Charlotte come on the screen. Cena fans aged 3-13, on the other hand, probably thought that weird old guy had it coming. The gauntlet has been laid down. It's Stewart versus Cena, kids versus nerdy adults, Brooklyn versus America.
This should be interesting, assuming this is fake: