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WWE.com recently tackled a fun hypothetical question. How would John Cena fare in the Attitude Era? Who better to ask than the king of the Attitude Era himself, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The Texas Rattlesnake has done a lot of media over the last several months promoting the WWE 13 video game. The video game concept is to recreate the Attitude Era with your favorite stars of the era along with the current WWE superstars. The concept of mixing and matching has been the driving marketing campaign and it would appear that THQ and the WWE are making one last push to close out 2012.

Steve Austin was interviewed on WWE.com about the game and the Attitude Era. The interview is fantastic but there is one snippet that is most interesting to fans of today and the era. Austin talks John Cena and how the future WWE Hall of Famer would do in Austin’s era.

“John Cena in The Attitude Era. Man, that’s a good question.

Yeah, had he been placed in it, and been dealt with accordingly, the John Cena you see now — the face of the franchise, the leader of the pack? Not so much. But I guarantee if you’d have gotten him face to face with “Stone Cold” in an interview, and you know John cuts a good interview himself, if I slapped the s*** out of that son of a b****, I think we’re off and running to make a lot of money.

All he needs is to be poked and prodded in the right way. I think John Cena has a hell of a lot of fire and he needs to be in the ring with the right opponent, or the right cat, to bring that out. So in the current environment, you really don’t see that in him.

Place [Cena] back 10 years in the ring with “Stone Cold”? You’d have rung the cash register, big time.”

Austin seems to be excited about Cena’s prospects back in the Attitude Era. Austin has also been asked similar questions about CM Punk and offered similar answers. Well, what else do you expect him to say? But how do you really think Cena would have done in that era?

I think that Cena would have wound up as a big heel. Cena would have been just as booed in the era as he is now. The difference is that the booking was more edgy and the WWE were in a war with WCW. Instead of forcing the square peg into a hole I think Cena would have been turned heel and would have done monster business against babyfaces like Austin and The Rock in the era.

I also think Cena would have eventually turned back and been a top babyface. There was something about that era in which the babyfaces had to earn the respect of the fans before they got cheered. Just ask The Rock why Rocky Maivia was booed out of the building. If you think about it, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between the Maivia and Cena characters. Someone like Punk on the other hand probably would have flourished.

Regardless we’ll never know but it is a fun question to think about it.

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