10 Most Important Matches In The History Of WWE
3. John Cena Vs. Umaga - Royal Rumble 2007
You will hate this, but try to understand the argument.
Prior to Royal Rumble 2007, John Cena was struggling as the company's top babyface.
Roughly nine months earlier, he was booed out of the building during his match with Triple H at WrestleMania 22. Not since Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series 1996 had a nominal babyface generated such a toxic reaction. Cena had great matches with Edge throughout 2006, but general consensus had it that he had been carried. But, at Royal Rumble, paired with an opponent not known as a workhorse, Cena proved himself capable of doing his own heavy lifting.
The events of January 28, 2007, awesome as they were, didn't do much to stem the rising tide. For virtually a decade, every Cena match, irrespective of quality, was received with a stark split from WWE's fragmented audience - but this was the genesis of Big Match John, the man who carried the company for nearly a decade by appealing to enchanted kids and, eventually, begrudging adults alike.
Umaga had much to do with the quality of the brutal Last Man Standing bout - you could almost believe he was an actual savage, even in the 21st century - but it was Cena's match, the match that made Cena as a worker, the match that allowed WWE to push him to an extent that helped secure its own sponsor-friendly future.