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14th Nov 2018

John Cena goes full-Backstreet Boys in strange vodka commercial

Wil Jones

John Cena is a man of many talents

Wrestler. Actor. Rapper. Fluent Mandarian speaker.

He might seem like the perfect human being. But the way I see it, there are exactly two big problems with John Cena.

They are:

1: There is only one of him.

2: He isn’t in a boyband.

Thankfully though, those issues have been dealt with, thanks to this commercial for Skyy Vodka.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say.

It’s like someone took the videos for “I Want It That Way” by The Backstreet Boys and “Bound 2” by Kanye West, threw in a touch of Magic Mike XXL, then sprinkled it with an airbrush decal you’d find on a Trump supporter’s minivan – and finally spewed the whole thing out into a 23 second Twitter video.

It is incredible and wonderful and I love it, and I am certain it must have been secretly directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

Also, is it just me, or is vodka definitely not very ‘American’, and a lot more ‘Russian’?

What makes it even weirder though, is that this is not the only advert that Skyy have released with John Cena on the campaign. They also dropped this other spot, which, well, is incredibly tame and normal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNuiH2N7CJc

Which just makes the whole thing even more bizarre. Like, when a brand decides that it is going to make its marketing pretty wild and out there, they put that across everything they do – all the ads are like that.

But doing one aimed at your patriotic uncle, and then one at stoner Adult Swim kids? That just makes everything even more confusing.

In case you are wondering what else John Cena is up to, apart from being in movies and sometimes wrestling – well, he now lives in China.

He’s been doing these travel-log videos for WWE’s YouTube Channel, and he’s basically like the second coming of Anthony Bourdain. Netflix need to give him his own travel show now.