At Money in the Bank 2024, John Cena announced his official retirement as a full-time in-ring participant in WWE. Well really, he announced “The Last Time is Now” retirement tour that will see him perform consistently for the last time through 2025. The Man Who Cannot Be Seen shall, indeed, be seen no more.
It is sort of surreal to see Cena taking his bow for me, as he was someone whose meteoric rise I witnessed first; a megastar I watched through all the thorny bits. To say Cena is one of the most important men in the history of WWE is an understatement, but through all that history, there have been so many matches, feuds, and moments that have cemented his status as a legend.
…and then there are other ones, that due to sheer volume, get lost in the shuffle. Or get relegated to oblivion because they honestly deserve it. That’s the stuff I’m here digging into today. For every gate-breaking match with Dwayne, there’s a pointless match against Michael Cole or some dull, filler feud that goes nowhere. The time is now!
Vs. Kevin Federline (2007)
Where were you when Kevin Federline pinned John Cena in the middle of his Superman run? Do people even know who Kevin Federaline is in 2024? Anyway, K-Fed attained trash pop culture fame by becoming Mr. Brittney Spears for a couple of years and their reality TV show that documented their toxic marriage in the mid-2000s.
In an effort to promote his debut album, Federline showed up at WWE’s Cyber Sunday PPV in 2006. He would later interfere in the main event, a triple threat match between Cena, King Booker, and Big Show – the world champions of RAW, Smackdown, and ECW respectively. He’d smash Cena in the spine with the World Heavyweight Championship and help King Booker retain his gold. The next night on RAW, a match was made between Federline and Cena for the New Year’s RAW for 2007.
The No Holds Barred match saw interference from Johnny Nitro (several months before he’d become John Morrison) that proved mostly inconsequential, but the biggest factor was from the also interloping Umaga. Cena had just begun feuding with the Samoan Bulldozer at the time and Umaga layed Cena out for K-Fed to get the easy three count. That match was never really brought up again and Federline’s debut album was ranked as one of the worst rap albums of all time.
I’m not done talking about that Umaga feud, however.
Vs. R-Truth (2011)
Following some tensions in the tag team of The Palace of Truth and Wisdom after Wrestlemania 27, R-Truth infamously turned heel on his buddy John Morrison and then proceeded to light up a cigarette on a RAW in England. This gave us one of my favorite niche chants of all time, “THAT’S ILLEGAL!” Truth became a sort of paranoid conspiracy theorist character and his next target was John Cena, who handily defeated him at the only Capital Punishment PPV to ever exist.
Despite its brevity, this feud gave us so many things for the R-Truth character. His unhinged goofiness came to light, it gave us his obsession with “Little Jimmy,” and perhaps most forgotten of all, it gave us the utterly tone deaf theater what was R-Truth dressed up in a Confederate general uniform singing “The Ants Go Marching” but replacing it with “Little Jimmy” and doing so off-rhythm.
Perhaps it is most forgotten about, however, because someone interfered in the grudge Table match on a RAW Roulette edition of RAW between the two. This left Cena lying on the mat “as uncomfortable as can possibly be” and the guy who interfered was the #1 contender and he was wearing a Stone Cold shirt. He then proceeded to cut a legendary promo that would change the course of WWE creative, and possibly wrestling history, forever. That’s right – right after the cartoonish actions of heel R-Truth was “the pipe bomb” and the Summer of Punk 2011.
Vs. Bobby Lashley (2007)
Coming off of multiple ECW Championship reigns, a feud with Vince McMahon himself, and representing Donald Trump in a Wrestlemania feature match, it was safe to say Bobby Lashley firmly had the rocket strapped to him. After being drafted to RAW and being stripped of his ECW Championship, Lashley started bumping shoulders with WWE Champion John Cena. The two white-meat babyfaces would meet in the main event of The Great American Bash 2007. Cena would wind up walking away after an immense FU (before it was called the Attitude Adjustment).
This match is largely forgotten for a multitude of reasons. Both Lashley and Cena were on “Superman” runs and had outstayed their welcome with many fans. In addition, this match took place just one month after the Benoit tragedy, which warped any kind of perception of time or engagement for the rest of the year.
Finally, it would be one of Lashley’s last WWE matches for over a decade, as he’d be taken off TV a few weeks later and had his contract expire and he wouldn’t return to the company until April 2018. This also means WWE in all their pettiness wouldn’t have mentioned him on-screen for those ten years as well.
Vs. Sabu (2006)
John Cena vs. Rob Van Dam at ECW: One Night Stand 2006 will always stand as a legendary encounter. The following PPV, Vengeance ‘06, is significantly less remembered. If it is even recalled at all, it is for the main event where a reunited D-Generation X buried the shit out of the Spirit Squad (including a future Dolph Ziggler/Nic Nameth) in a 5-on-2 handicap match.
With a revived ECW running amok and Cena still a public enemy of the brand, the other biggest name on the show besides RVD would step up to Cena. That would be notorious botch machine Sabu, who some may have forgotten had a run in WWE at all. He didn’t last long, but he did have headline matches at ONS and Vengeance, as well as at Summerslam a couple months later.
Sabu would face Cena in an Extreme Rules Lumberjack match, where members of the ECW and RAW rosters would be outside the ring and able to maul or assist Cena at any point. Cena would win by making Sabu tap out in a match that wound up shorter than the abysmal Kane vs. Imposter Kane match that also took place on this show.
Vs. The Miz (2009)
Following a stupendous run on ECW and Smackdown and a lengthy run as WWE Tag Team Champion, The Miz was drafted to RAW in 2009 and truly began his ascent to stardom. One of the first things The Miz did was call out top guy Cena week after week to matches. Since Cena was injured, he didn’t answer, but Miz took those as forfeits and claimed to be undefeated against Cena.
This almost seemed a deliberate homage to a similar feud Chris Jericho had with Goldberg in WCW. Just like with that feud, Cena returned and thoroughly thrashed Miz in his comeback match. If anything, this established that Miz wasn’t afraid to talk his way into opportunities. This was also a period where Miz established his “awesome” catchphrase and his finisher, the Skull-Crushing Finale.
This feud is likely forgotten about because it was during a nothing period of a pretty unremarkable time and would be overshadowed by their Wrestlemania feud just two years later. The match itself is barely over five minutes long.
Vs. Cesaro/Claudio Castagnoli (2015)
When Cena was US Champion back in 2015, he sort of bucked the trend of what people had come to expect of him by trying to become a workhorse. He would hold a weekly open challenge and allow anyone to try and beat him for the US title. It was actually pretty fun, and was most notable for the main roster debuts of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. But there was another man, Cesaro (currently AEW’s Claudio Castagnoli), who had proved to be an even bigger workhorse but hadn’t been given the opportunity.
Cesaro would challenge Cena twice a couple weeks apart for the US title in two absolutely incredible TV matches, the first one lasting nearly twice as long as Cena’s other challenges. Cesaro would win by DQ, setting up the rematch later on where Cena definitely won, but only after a half-hour of workhorse war.
It gets forgotten because there wasn’t much follow-up, but also Cena was having a fantastic trilogy of matches with Kevin Owens that got most of the focus.
Vs. Umaga (2007)
I promised we’d get back to the Samoan Bulldozer.
December 2006 and January 2007 saw Cena feuding with the, at that point, undefeated Umaga. It was booking out of the Hulk Hogan tome of yesteryear of “build up a monster, feed them to the top face.” Again, Cena was in the midst of a pretty tired booking pattern, so it was genuinely a curiosity if they’d let Umaga defeat him.
Of course they didn’t and Cena ended Umaga’s undefeated streak with…a roll-up. Not kidding. That was the ending to the main event of New Year’s Revolution 2007.
This was protested as a fluke by Umaga’s manager, the too charismatic for his own good Armando Alejandro Estrada. A challenge was made too Cena for the Royal Rumble for a Last Man Standing match, which the “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect” enthusiast of course accepted, even after getting his ribs busted by Umaga splashing him through a table.
At the Royal Rumble, the two more than made up for the shameful showing earlier in the month, as their Last Man Standing contest is probably one of the most underrated matches of the era because it gets largely forgotten about. The two absolutely bludgeoned each other and even had a unique finish that saw Cena choke out the monster with the disassembled ring ropes. Umaga’s selling of the choke is nightmarishly realistic, with Cena retaining the title because, as JR notes in the match, “even monsters need to breathe.”
(Why yes, this list was conceived out of my desire to gush about the Cena/Umaga Last Man Standing match to a wider audience because it might be my favorite LMS match ever, how could you tell?)
Vs. CM Punk (2010 & 2013)
To say CM Punk and Cena have had some wonderful dances is an understatement, but even in their legendary catalog, there are still two matches that feel like they are either overshadowed or forgotten completely.
The first of these took place in the summer of 2010 as the main event of a special “Viewer’s Choice” episode of RAW. This was Cena and Punk, who got the vote for his absolutely incredible Straight Edge Messiah heel work over the past year. The two clashed in a contest it seemed pretty obvious Cena was going to win…until NXT Season 1 winner Wade Barrett showed up with the other rookies who were a part of the original NXT experiment, including one Daniel Bryan. They came sporting black and yellow “N” armbands.
What happened next was the squad of eight youngsters descending on the ring like vultures, tearing Cena and the entire ringside area apart. This match is forgotten about because it was more-or-less a simple promotional catalyst for what became known as the “NXT Riot” that gave birth to the stable and storyline known as The Nexus. Ironically, Punk would usurp Barrett’s leadership of the group going into the next year.
The other one took place on Feb. 25th 2013. Cena had just won the Royal Rumble and The Rock had just ended Punk’s 434-day reign as WWE Champion. After coming up short in a rematch at Elimination Chamber, Punk challenged Cena with his Wrestlemania title shot on the line. The two would engage in a nearly half-hour long match that featured all kinds of callbacks to their previous endeavors and included a forbidden piledriver. Cena would win following a stupid surprising hurricanrana into an AA. Given Punk’s 10 year exodus less than a year later and the fact that February is usually a blur in Wrestlemania build-up, it’s no wonder this is forgotten about.
As of the writing of this piece, it is the last time Cena and Punk would meet for at least over a decade. It would be a real shame to not see these two run it back at least one more time before Cena hangs it up.
