10 WWE Stars We Expected To Be World Champion By Now

9. John Cena

Stone Cold Steve Austin Shinsuke Nakamura
WWE.com

How has John Cena not yet broke Ric Flair's fictional record? He's broken just about everything he's touched in wrestling since breaking Hollywood.

Rusev had to rename a day in his honour to turn around a flailing year after getting crushed by 'The Champ'. Baron Corbin's entire push went bye-bye. Roman Reigns was eviscerated as Monday Night Raw's alpha male. The Undertaker's terrible match streak was diffused when he squashed him in just 2:45 at WrestleMania 34, but Cena still managed to slot a botch in before darting back to Hollywood.

There's the old adage about a broken clock being right twice a day of course, with twice approximately being just about how often John Cena could be expected to have good matches if he's in there with exactly the right opponents.

He doesn't seem as keen as he was in 2015 to share his spotlight with willing up-and-comers, but it's still staggering that he's not yet dethroned AJ Styles yet again, or had his turn with Raw's red strap just to make sure there's at least one brand new bullet point in his 'In Wrestling' section on Wikipedia.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett