10 Greatest WWE TV Matches Ever
9. John Cena Vs. Shawn Michaels - RAW, (April 23, 2007)
This list is an attempt to catalogue the best matches suited to the TV environment - more so than the best matches that were necessarily performed on television - but an exception must be made for John Cena Vs. Shawn Michaels II: an epic, seesawing tour de force.
Cena didn't feel the need to self-consciously add to his repertoire, delivering moves beyond his capabilities like his sloppy and mercifully abandoned springboard stunner as he did in later years. He instead lent his existing moveset more gravitas and danger - taunting a desperate Michaels, who had barely managed to avoid Cena’s STF for a second time, with a smirky, this close gesture. Michaels, in response, kicked the bottom rope in frustration. The psychology was so effective that in the moment, it mattered little that Cena’s submission of choice was as flimsy as the argument that he didn’t know to wrestle. It was sold by both men as something completely devastating so well that you could believe it.
The ensuing action was a structural and pacing masterclass - arguably the very best match WWE has promoted in excess of forty minutes - in which Shawn’s agonised selling of his cramped lower back underpinned every ultra-heated sequence.
“What a damn match this is!” Jerry Lawler almost giggled at the coda, as Cena grabbed the bottom rope in an awesome false finish in a match all the better for not relying too heavily on them. It was impossible to argue with.