6 Devastating WWE Defeats John Cena Suffered At SummerSlam

5. Batista Beats Cena Clean At SummerSlam 2008

It was Batista vs. Cena one on one "for the first time ever." That's how WWE built it up. These were the two guys that were considered the top guys in WWE for the previous four years. They both ascended to the top of the company in 2005 with Cena locked in as the top face on Raw while Batista was a top face on Smackdown. That led to this SummerSlam showdown. The match was very entertaining. They're both power wrestlers, so there were a lot of cool spots where they would hit their big moves and the other guy would bounce back quickly to hit one of their own. It was a smart way to do the match because the fans were behind both guys. Doing a traditional match wouldn't have worked as well. Give them credit for putting on a very entertaining match. You can tell how good a match is by how much louder the crowd gets as it goes on. There was a memorable spot near the end as Cena jumped off the top and Batista countered it into a Powerbomb. Cena landed hard on his neck. That injury led to a surgery that put Cena out for about three months. Batista followed that up with a Batista Bomb and he won clean. A rare clean loss for Cena. A lot of people expected Cena to win this match. The reason is that he's the younger of the two, he's the better talker, more of a media friendly guy and he was better too. When Batista won it was a bit of a surprise, but it did set up their feud less than two years later when Batista was in the heel role with Cena winning that feud.