10 WWE Wrestlers John Cena Shouldn't Have Beaten
6. Umaga
It's crazy to think about all the similarities Rusev shares with the late Umaga in regards to their respective pushes as well as their involvement with John Cena.
Similar to the Bulgarian brute, Umaga arrived on the WWE scene on the Raw that followed WrestleMania 22 and was given the monster push from the get-go. However, when Vince McMahon looked at him, he didn't see a future world champion he could make money off of; rather, he saw another obstacle Cena could overcome during his lengthy stint as champion.
Through the remainder of 2006, Umaga decimated everyone he stepped in the ring with, scoring multiple victories over former world champions including Ric Flair, Triple H and Shawn Michaels. As it turned out, his impressive credentials earned him a shot at Cena's WWE Championship at the New Year's Revolution event in 2007, and predictably enough, it was The Champ who handed him his first taste of defeat in WWE.
Being protected in defeat, he'd face off against Cena in a Last Man Standing rematch at Royal Rumble and once again fell short of victory. While the matches they had were nothing short of spectacular, Umaga's run-ins with The Champ did nothing to benefit him in the long-run; he'd never come as close to contending for a world championship before his release in 2009.