Ranking John Cena's WWE SummerSlam Matches From Worst To Best

This is a decidedly mixed bag. On the one hand, team WWE’s headline match with The Nexus has a lot going for it. The booking of the story to this point had been excellent and it felt like a major clash to close the show. Wade Barrett looked a genuine star on the rise, and the return of Daniel Bryan, while not quite seismic, made it apparent that they had another performer with main event potential.

The match itself is good fun, too, with Bret Hart making a cameo, a pre-Ryback Skip Sheffield looking impressive, and Bryan exercising his killer instinct. And then there’s that ending. Cena takes a hellacious beating before rising above hate to take down two Nexus members on his own, effectively killing the angle dead (though it’d limp on for a few more months).

Team WWE’s Edge and Chris Jericho have publicly said they thought their team going over was a terrible idea and were he capable of human self-doubt, Cena might feel likewise. Though he’s denied it, rumours abound that Cena pushed for the original ending of The Nexus going over to be changed. Whatever his role, it’s Cena’s excesses writ large.