John Cena's 7 Night Of Champions Matches From Worst To Best
More than enough Five Knuckle Shuffles for everybody!
This coming Sunday, John Cena has the task of taking on Seth Rollins in hopes of regaining his lost United States Championship. 2015 has been a career-defining year for Cena and he's elevated a previously forgettable title to unexpected prominence. His supporters are hoping that he'll be victorious this Sunday.
But if Seth Rollins wants to defeat his mighty challenger, perhaps it would be wise to review his past performances at this very event.
In 2007, WWE's annual Vengeance Pay-Per-View was also billed as being a Night of Champions, because every title was on the line. Cena walked into that event as the WWE Champion and has competed in every WWE Championship match at Night of Champions since then, barring the 2013 event which he missed due to injury.
Despite always competing in the prestigious WWE Championship bouts, his win/loss record isn't exactly superb. He's only garnered victories on three occasions and one of those was a DQ win when he was the challenger. That meant no title change in John's favor.
Even though he could stand to be a tad more victorious at this show, he typically performs at a high level. All of the matches are at least moderately enjoyable and the top three on this list are well above average. Here they are, ranked from worst to best.
7. 2009 Vs. Triple H and Randy Orton
For the WWE Championship at Night of Champions 2009, there was a tournament held to see who would face champion Randy Orton. John Cena and Triple H were in the finals of this tournament but were both attacked mid-match by Orton's Legacy buddies.
Instead of facing neither of them like he hoped, special guest host for the night Ted DiBiase told Orton that he'd face them both because neither of them lost. This match was touted as a rematch to the WrestleMania 24 triple threat main event.
The thing that stands out most about this match is the ending. Triple H had Orton in a sharpshooter while John Cena applied a crossface in tandem. When Randy started tapping out the ref became super confused and didn't call for the bell. Rhodes and Dibiase, Jr. then came out to interfere. Randy won after hitting his RKO against Cena, who was in the process of trying to AA Cody.
A big problem with this match is that there was no one guy for the Philly crowd to get behind. Both Cena and Hunter were getting mixed reactions, and the match itself was contested at a fairly slow pace. This resulted in several noticeably quiet moments. Not a terrible bout, but the worst of Cena's of Night of Champions back catalogue.