YMMV / John Laurinaitis

• Creator's Pet:
  • Was Mrs. Baba's favorite wrestler in All Japan Pro Wrestling despite being out-classed by virtually everyone else on the same level.
  • As mentioned below, Laurinaitis was also this in WWE, this time due to him being one of Vince's yesmen. Despite him lacking the ability to be an onscreen performer (with poor acting and mic skills) and his character being not only generic and dull, but also an extremely irritating and poor Mr. McMahon wannabe overall, he got pushed to the moon as a top heel in WWE. It reached an all time high when he was the GM of both RAW and Smackdown and became a borderline Villain Protagonist. It even got as far as Laurinaitis main eventing a PPV against John Cena, the top face and star of the company, which he wound up WINNING. And he escaped justice so often that it seemed like he would never go away and would be around hogging the spotlight for a long time. Thankfully he didn't, and was fired at No Way Out. However, on the following Raw, Laurinatis was still rewarded with bloated screentime and got to main event the show before (finally) leaving television. Somebody upstairs didn't like Laurinatis, but equally, WWE creative couldn't resist trolling both him and the audience one more time. Needless to say the fanbase did not mourn his departure.
• Fan Nickname: "John Laryngitis," in reference to his raspy, "dying man" voice.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Was a top Gaijin for All Japan Pro Wrestling, reaching levels of success far beyond anything he ever achieved in the U.S. as a wrestler. He held the All Japan Pro Wrestling All Asia Tag Team Titles twice with one of the promotion's all-time greats, Kenta Kobashi and the All Japan Pro Wrestling World Tag Team Titles twice with Kobashi, once with "Dr. Death" Steve Williams and once with former WWE World Tag Team Champion Bart Gunn.
• Harsher in Hindsight: John Laurinaitis's onscreen character (as a General Manager) was essentially a Jerkass, Mean Boss, and (somewhat) Invincible Villain who rarely got his comeuppance and did quite a lot of mean and detestable things. Based on this, one could argue that Laurinaitis and his reign of terror were an ominous precursor to The Authority.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • He wrestled against "Mean" Mark Callous who was being managed by Theodore Long, in 1990 with WCW, in a match announced by Jim Ross. "Mean Mark" is now the legendary Undertaker, John is a WWE authority figure and Teddy is his archnemesis. JR changed his gimmick and is now an announcing legend.
  • His feud with John Cena is this, with John having being Nikki Bella's fiancé (although they would later call it off) and Johnny Ace marrying Nikki's mother.
  • His feud with Cena is also this when, looking through WWE programming, one realizes that Cena actually punched him in the face twice before Laurinaitis became an onscreen figure: When Cena threw Edge into the Long Island Sound in 2006, Laurinaitis was one of the officials trying to stop Cena, only for Cena to punch him in the face, and he was the man Vince McMahon sent to ring the bell during Punk's match with John Cena at Money in the Bank 2011 while Cena had Punk in the STF to hand the victory to Cena without Punk tapping out, only for Cena to punch him in the face.
• Moral Event Horizon: Blackmailing a would-be-quitting Theodore Long with losing his grandkids' WWE-funded tuition unless he agreed to work for Laurinaitis as a Butt-Monkey.
• Never Live It Down: His stint in WCW with Shane Douglas as the skateboarding tag team "The Dynamic Dudes" is always brought up by CM Punk and John Cena. Too bad most fans, young and old, didn't watch early 90s WCW.
  • Brick Joke: During the 2011 Slammy Awards they finally show video clips of this period, set to "The Touch" by Stan Bush.
  • Having a completely blank expression when Punk finally hit him with a GTS, ruining a long awaited payoff.
• Older Than They Think: Hey, you know Randy Orton's famous finishing move, the RKO, that can come from anywhere at any time? Do you know where he got it from? Diamond Dallas Page's Diamond Cutter, right? No, no, it's older than that- it was innovated in Japan (as the 'Ace Crusher') by a wrestler by the name of Johnny Ace. Yep, John Laurinaitis invented one of the most popular moves of all time.
• Replacement Scrappy: WWE attempted to give John Cena his PG version of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon; it doesn't work because Cena is no Austin and Laurinaitus was sure as Hell no VKM. One of the key ingredients is that your wrestler should be someone who represents the people so that the audience can have some catharsis. The other ingredient is that the boss needs to be a legitimately threatening string-puller. What happens when you have neither of those? You get John Cena vs. John Laurinaitus at Over the Limit 2012.
• Retroactive Recognition: Careful examination of WWE programming can bring back several appearances of Laurinaitis before he became an onscreen authority figure:
  • His seemingly first appearance on WWE programming was after Kane had lost his mask and went berserk on everyone. When Kane at one point tombstoned Linda McMahon on the stage, he was one of the people trying to stop him.
  • When John Cena threw Edge into the Long Island Sound during their feud in 2006, Laurinaitis was among the officials trying to stop Cena, only for Cena to punch him in the face. (Kinda hilarious considering his later feud with Cena.)
  • He also appeared as one of the officials in the segment where Randy Orton punted Vince McMahon in the head.
  • He was also name-dropped by CM Punk in his now-infamous "Pipebomb" Worked Shoot promo as one of Vince's "gladhanding, nonsensical, douchebag yes men" (possibly setting up the two's ongoing feud during his tenure nearly four months before it started), and he was the man Vince McMahon sent to ring the bell during Punk's match with John Cena at Money in the Bank 2011 to hand the victory to Cena and essentially recreate the Montreal Screwjob yet again, only for Cena to (you guessed it) punch him in the face.
• The Scrappy: For someone who was once part of the golden age of Japanese pro wrestling (King's Road in All Japan Pro Wrestling), John Laurinaitis (the man invented the Cutter, for God's sake) was a terrible talker, given his multitude of verbal flubs. Aceman has an unfortunate voice, earning him the nickname John Laryngitis. It occasionally lapped around to being funny (he was consistently hilarious throughout his CM Punk feud — "Don't make me take off my blazer!!"); WWE even ran with the joke by sarcastically dubbing him Mr. Excitement. The novelty wore thin after a while, though. It got worse after WrestleMania 28 when he became General Manager of SmackDown, as well.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Initially the IWC was excited to see Laurinaitis on television, as he was originally Vince's onscreen Yes-Man to mirror how he is viewed as one of Vince's yesmen in Real Life, and thought he would play the role of Vince's bumbling stooge similar to Patterson and Briscoe during the Attitude Era, a role that would have been a LOT more fitting for Laurinaitis due to his constantly stumbling on the mic and his overall awkward personality. Instead he got promoted by Vince to the role of RAW General Manager, and eventually he became Smackdown GM as well and pushed him as a Small Name, Big Ego Tyrant Takes the Helm and he eventually was turned into an attempted borderline Knight of Cerebus whom everyone was supposed to take seriously and view as a legitimately threatening heel. It didn't go as well as WWE had hoped, since Laurinaitis's limited abilities as a performer made him ineffective to play a role that big, either coming across as so bumbling he was impossible to take seriously or just simply annoyed people.
  • The Invincible Villain thing didn't help, either. Most heel GMs have one or two "problem children" who seem to always be able to outsmart them when the heel bosses tries to screw them (Austin to McMahon, for instance). "Big Johnny", though, was the opposite, where he always was able to outsmart the faces regardless of the effort they put into winning against him (even a small victory proved difficult). This has been sort of a thing for the WWE lately (not to mention that the bosses seem to take up more screen time then many wrestlers do and they want to make their mark on EVERY! SINGLE! SEGMENT!), but it really became annoying during Laurinaitis' tenure.
• X-Pac Heat:
  • Marks and smarks alike despise Laurinaitis for his spotty record as a Real Life talent scout, rather than just being a Heel. Unlike say, Paul Heyman (a man of dubious moral compass who nonetheless cuts an amazing promo), there was no redemption for Laurinaitis due to his stock character, his nonexistent charisma, and constant botching of words...along with his annoying voice and relying on listing his job title every night. His very existence is proof that WWE still doesn't understand (or is indifferent to) the difference between good heat vs. cheap heat. (See: Michael Cole.)
  • Even marks, who normally watch wrestling as if it were real and hate heels solely based on what they did onscreen, simply hate Laurinaitis because they find him boring and believe he is making the product boring.
  • Long before that, as one half of the Dynamic Dudes (a pair of skateboarding wrestlers). When they received a face push by having manager Jim Cornette betray them for an opposing heel tag team (The Midnight Express), the audience cheered Cornette.

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