10 Times WWE Couldn't Repeat Success
5. John Cena
If anyone actually has repeated the success of Hulk Hogan - in spirit and style, if not necessarily statistics - then it's John Cena.
Like Luger, Cena was never originally ordained a babyface hero, though his path to becoming one was the direct inverse. Rather than being handpicked through aesthetic admiration, Cena was staring down a listless WWE career before an off-the-cuff rap found him a fandom. The rest, as lazy journalists tired of repeating the same stories say, is history.
Away from the company bean counters, the defining characteristic of John's eternal run on top wasn't his t-shirt sales but his absolutely dislodgeable hegemony. Seemingly, Cena was in the tool shed for the shovel as much as Triple H before him. So by 2013 - having denied CM Punk his apparently rightful WrestleMania main event for a needless re-run - most over the age of 18 were desperate for change at the top.
A New Face was chosen to run the Place in 2015. With one eye on Hollywood, Cena was finally winding down, having been thoroughly mauled by Brock Lesnar as a visual conclusion to his arc as top dog. A new, bigger dog was being groomed: Roman Reigns.
At the previous year's Royal Rumble, he'd been cheered as the man - any man - to take Batista's pre-ordained place at WrestleMania XXX. Come 2015, the cat - or the dog - had skipped the bag. Reigns was WWE's new Golden Boy, and in an instant, he was just John Cena 2.0. His popularity ended right there.