20 Awesome WWE Royal Rumble Moments

5. Cena Pulls Off A Shocker (2008)

CM Punk
WWE

To be fair, any “moment” is automatically made at least four times better when Jim Ross calls it. But still, John Cena’s return at the 2008 Royal Rumble was an incredible surprise. In October 2007, Cena suffered a torn pectoral muscle, which was expected to sideline him for more than a half-year.

Much like Edge would do two years later, Cena cut the projected recovery time in half and returned in less than four months at the Rumble. In a truly memorable scene, Cena’s entrance music hit at #30, which sent the notoriously hostile Madison Square Garden crowd into a frenzy. Cena would go on to eliminate four wrestlers en route to winning his first Rumble.

Cena would use his title shot the following month and fail to win the title, but getting the MSG faithful to actually cheer for John Cena was an incredible feat that should go down in Royal Rumble history.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.