John Cena’s 10 Other Moves Of Doom

You’ve read about them on countless forums and comment sections. You’ve seen them be performed countless times. The ‘Five Moves of Doom’ are the 16 times World Champion John Cena’s devastating sequence of moves to normally defeat his opponents. They are the following:

1. Sitout hip toss

2. Flying shoulder block

3. Side slam

4. Five Knuckle Shuffle

5. Attitude Adjustment

As long as they make sense and change it up every once in a while a wrestler having a chain of featured moves isn’t a bad thing. You could argue great technicians like Bret Hart had five moves of doom: the inverted atomic drop, Russian legsweep, backbreaker, elbowdrop from the second rope and Sharpshooter. Or Bret's heated rival, Shawn Michaels, regarded as the greatest wrestler ever by some, has his own sequence: Manhattan drop, flying forearm, scoopslam, elbowdrop from the top rope and Sweet Chin Music. Cena’s bitter foe CM Punk was the same - springboard clothesline, kneelift to the corner, short-arm clothesline, flying elbow drop and GTS.

Cena, mind, is the only wrestler who has ever openly admitted and joked about his Five Moves of Doom – even in his promos.

The reputation of these five signature moves is mixed, as Cena has noted. Young fans love them. And they do provoke a huge reaction from crowds. Even John Cena's Dad on the indies has executed John’s Five Moves of Doom for huge pops. Cena’s detractors, however, aren’t keen on how The Champ has a steadfastness in using this move set in every one of his matches. People have pointed out the problem with Cena's 5 Moves of Doom is the psychology behind it. Cena’s opponents continuously taking a wide swing at him after two shoulder tackles takes you out the realism the wrestlers are trying to emit. Especially given one of those moves involves pumping up his trainers.

Another issue is that it's just simply repetitive – why watch when you’re going to see the same thing over and over again with no changes?

But those overwhelmingly bored with Cena’s stale ring routine were pleasantly surprised when he started to vary his arsenal in matches with Kevin Owens, Cesaro and AJ Styles to name a few, when he was having the best matches of his career nearly every week some would contest. And it wasn’t a case of his opponents carrying him; he was keeping up with all these pros, having great matches with anyone and everyone. His evolution to get to this level was staggering, and by wrestling all this new talent he made the effort and put in the time to learn an entire vastly new moveset too.