How Good Was John Cena Actually?
The time to appraise WWE’s John Cena is NOW.
It’s over. The man that WWE has positioned in its grand narrative as the ‘Greatest Of All-Time’ has retired.
It took WWE far too long, but they got the retirement run right in the end. The counterproductive creative disgrace that was his shock tactic heel run will forever leave a blemish on the whole thing, but in a way, Cena's 2025 run was a fitting end to one of the most uneven and divisive wrestling headliners ever.
“Record”-holding WWE Champion John Cena is a fascinating subject for this series.
If you’re a millennial who tolerated WWE in its post-monopoly era, because you still held hope that the company would grow up alongside you just like they did in 1998, the answer to the leading question is a firm, almost angry: “Not at all”.
Cena represented a betrayal. WWE (sensibly) was recruiting children for a new era; Cena was their gurning, lame mascot. For a long time - the SuperCena years, roughly between 2008 and 2014 - John Cena was an overbearing, clunky embarrassment who was pushed well beyond a degree of parody. What's worse, he was ever-present and indestructible, so intent on terminating your internet darlings that he no-sold the injury list.
By 2015, things changed. Cena adopted a super indie-lite style, and while the execution of his new “movez” was often rotten, many fans took to him. He was trying, years and years after his WWE Hall of Fame induction was a formality, and he was more giving. It felt like atonement. Not many people hated John Cena after that.
Some never did. There were the kids, of course, but Cena has long attracted a subset of contrarian hardcore fans who love him and Akira Taue alike. 2007 John Cena is held in as much esteem as 1989 Ric Flair by the worst wrestling hipster you know.
The paradigm shifted with such force that it became lame to “hate on” Cena - like his critics were too concerned with appearing cool that they failed to see the proof in front of them. Stop faking it, poser.
Is John Cena almost universally beloved? And if the answer to that question is “Yes”, does he deserve to be?