Ranking Every WWE Title Match At WrestleMania Worst To Best

In reality, JBL defending the WWE Championship against John Cena was never particularly on the WrestleMania 21 card to serve as an all-time classic.

Rather than being about putting on an in-ring clinic, this match was merely here to serve as the moment the young Cena won a World Title for the first time. In that regard, the bully, brash heel figure of John Bradshaw Layfield was a fine foil for a Cena who was growing in popularity with each passing week.

Less than three years after he appeared on SmackDown to proclaim his "ruthless aggression", Cena had morphed from generic babyface to the Doctor of Thuganomics, to United States Champion, and by this time in 2005, it was a matter of when WWE was going to pull the trigger on the Massachusetts native as a true top guy rather than if Cena would ever get to that rarefied air.

The WrestleMania 21 WWE Title match was serviceable, clocking in at a brisk 11 minutes as JBL did the job for the rising babyface star who was still a while away from the Let's Go Cena/Cena Sucks chants that would come to be a trademark of his career.