25 WWE Champions Who Never Got Their Rematch

11. John Cena

John Cena Daniel Bryan SummerSlam 2013
WWE.com

Title Lost: WWE Championship
Lost Title To: Daniel Bryan

It’s doubtful anyone is crying a river for 16-time world champ John Cena not getting a rematch after losing the WWE Championship to Daniel Bryan in 2013 at SummerSlam in a hard-fought classic of a match.

Bryan attained a lifelong dream, main-eventing a major PPV and winning the gold, only for Randy Orton to cash in his MITB briefcase and turn Bryan’s celebration into a five-minute title reign.

In reality, Cena was not getting a title rematch anytime soon, as he was heading for an operating table to have surgery on his elbow. He’d return two months later to beat Alberto Del Rio for the World Heavyweight Championship, so don’t pity the poor guy.

It worked out pretty well for Bryan too, at least for a little while.

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.