10 WWE Careers That Were Transformed In One Year
7. John Cena - 2002
John Cena won, nearly lost and saved his job all over the space of six months in one of WWE's most chaotic ever years.
2002 saw the company lose Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, thousands of viewers and its own end initial before the end of the Summer, with fallen SmackDown star John Cena's sharp decline emblematic of how quickly the product was chewing through everything, regardless of quality.
The guy that slapped Kurt Angle wasn't - as Cena alluded to in the otherwise hogwash Ruthless Aggression docuseries - The Guy, but the one popping the boys on a tour bus turned out to be.
His now-legendary turn as Vanilla Ice at the 2002 SmackDown Halloween party was enough to send the recently-turned heel in a brand new direction that hit instantly. There'd be tweaks to his gear and aesthetic in 2003, but the response his freestyling Royal Rumble entrance received highlighted just how quickly he'd gone from zero to anti-hero.