5 Wrestlers Who Beat John Cena (And What Happened Next)

Monday night belongs to the Kevin Owens Show, where the prize-fighting Universal Champion resides. Raw has always seemed to work as a home for Kevin Owens. Despite some of the great stuff he did in NXT, and some of the wonderful things he’s done on pay-per-view since, KO has been a constant for the WWE’s flagship show dating back to mid-2015 when he challenged John Cena for the US Championship.

Of course, he didn’t actually challenge him that night. He merely showed up, powerbombed the Leader of the Cenation right down to hell, and then stood on his title belt. That’s how you make an entrance.

Few could’ve suspected what was to come. Kevin Owens went on to Elimination Chamber in a one on one match with Cena, his first ever main roster fight against the top guy of the last 10 years. And he pinned him clean. As debuts go it was quite possibly the best, even better than Finn Bálor’s two-match showing on Raw a few months back.

What followed in the immediate aftermath was what many people thought of as Kevin Owens being brought back down to Earth; he lost two consecutive matches to Cena (including one via submission to the awful STF), and then fell into a meaningless feud with Cesaro that got put in the death spot at SummerSlam. Only towards the end of the year did KO get a lift, bagging the Intercontinental Championship, having an excellent showing at the Royal Rumble in both the main event and his Last Man Standing encounter with Dean Ambrose, before winning the title again and taking it all the way to WrestleMania.

Having retained on-screen relevance through some meandering stories, fat jokes, and 50/50 booking, Owens then broke off to feud with bitter rival Sami Zayn in both singles and multi-man action right through to their match of the year candidate at Payback. From there, he ended up pairing with Chris Jericho to form a hugely entertaining tag team that picked up a marquee win at SummerSlam over Enzo & Cass, before of course winning the vacant WWE Universal Championship in a moment that shocked fans around the world.

While it can be argued that it’s too early to judge Owens’ title reign, winning the top title on the flagship show is certainly an improvement on where KO was after he beat John Cena, regardless of how long it took to get there.

Career trend: Initially down, then sky high.