The Best And Worst Moments Of John Cena's Career

WWE Saturday Night's Main Event on December 13th is coming ever closer, meaning that the 17-time World Champion John Cena's professional wrestling career is almost finished.

Joining the WWE back in late 2000 as a member of Ohio Valley Wrestling, John Cena has remained loyal to the promotion ever since. Even while working a part-time schedule in the later years of his career, Cena has always been a part of major storylines and moments.

Having such a long and historic career, it makes sense that these highlight-worthy moments are a bit mixed. Some have been great and proved why making Cena the top face of the promotion for so many years made sense. Others showed that it wasn't always amazing, and certain things would have been better off not happening.

Let's review Cena's career and highlight a few of his best and worst moments (in no particular order).

Best - Turning heel at Elimination Chamber

In isolation, the heel turn from Elimination Chamber 2025 was pretty great. It shocked fans and made people extremely excited for the WrestleMania match between Cody Rhodes and Cena. A heel turn was something that people had wanted from Cena for many years, growing tired of his usual "Never Back Down" and "Hustle, Loyalty, Respect" mantras.

While the moment does have the unnecessary involvement of Travis Scott, seeing Cena align with "The Final Boss," The Rock, and brutally beat down Rhodes made for one of the most insane and shocking moments WWE has had in quite some time.

Now, only if the company could have followed up on this moment with something that was equally as good.

Worst - Heel run and 17th World Championship reign

WWE should have had an easy win with Cena's heel run after Elimination Chamber, but it quickly turned sour. The build-up to WrestleMania was decent, and fans were hyped to see what a modern heel Cena would be like in the ring, but the actual match ended up being an absolute drag. Add to that the addition of Travis Scott and the absence of The Rock, and the audience was left in the worst kind of shock.

The follow-up matches were just alright at best. Backlash against Randy Orton was fine and a decent send-off for their long-running rivalry. The matches with R-Truth were far from amazing and a bit short. The tag match at Money in the Bank was overshadowed by R-Truth getting rehired after shockingly being let go from WWE.

Lastly, Night of Champions against CM Punk had the most potential, but ended up just decent and very overbooked with The Vision, Penta, and Sami Zayn all getting involved near the end. The run came to an end with Cena simply reverting to a face and trashing the decision to turn heel in the first place.

Best - Winning the Grand Slam

Finally completing the Grand Slam and winning the Intercontinental Championship from Dominik Mysterio was something most wouldn’t have expected to happen.

Cena has had multiple reigns with the United States Championship and would capture a set of Tag Team Championships out of the blue for a short reign, but he never once got close to the Intercontinental Championship outside of a few title shots during live event tours. Cena never even challenged for the belt until his match against Mysterio on Raw.

Worst - Challenging Rey Mysterio for the WWE Championship

While most had fun seeing John Cena beat Dominik Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship on Raw, the same can’t be said for when Cena did the same to Rey Mysterio years prior for the WWE Championship.

On the July 25th, 2011 episode of Monday Night Raw, Rey Mysterio beat The Miz in the finals of a tournament to crown a new WWE Champion after CM Punk walked out of the company with the belt at Money in the Bank that year. In the main event of that episode, Cena would challenge Mysterio for the title despite Mysterio already wrestling earlier in the night.

Cena won the title, and Mysterio wouldn’t get a rematch until almost a month later, when Alberto del Rio was the champion. While the match was good, it didn’t make much sense for a babyface John Cena to pull such a heel move and capitalize on an exhausted Mysterio.

Best - The Firefly Fun House match

John Cena and Bray Wyatt had amazing chemistry with each other. Their first major match would be at WrestleMania 30 in a solid contest, but many believe it had the wrong winner. That feud from 2014 was a bit goofy, especially at Extreme Rules, but the end was great with an amazing Last Man Standing match at Payback.

After that, they would compete against each other every so often in multi-man matches or live events, but the best would come at WrestleMania 36 in their final and most interesting match.

The cinematic Firefly Fun House match between The Fiend and John Cena was, and still is, one of the most insane and out there ideas for a professional wrestling match. It doesn’t feature athletic in-ring work or ridiculous spots that leave people shocked, but instead tells a story about Cena’s career and relationship with Wyatt.

Worst - WrestleMania 27 against The Miz

John Cena is a very sound wrestler when he wants to be. Matches against the likes of Shawn Michaels, CM Punk, AJ Styles, Cesaro, and more can be considered some of the best in-ring work WWE has seen in a long time, but not every Cena match is like that.

WrestleMania 27 would be an example of when a Cena match can be rather bad. The main event of the show would be a No Disqualification bout for the WWE Championship between the champion, The Miz, and Cena.

The in-ring work was far from great, and then throw in a concussion to The Miz and The Rock overshadowing, and this ends up being what many would consider one of the worst WrestleMania main events of all time.

Best - Royal Rumble 2008 return

Cena’s ability to recover from an injury has been called superhuman at times. The first time he was able to showcase this ability was when he suffered a torn pectoral muscle back in 2007. His muscle ended up being torn completely off the bone during a match with Mr. Kennedy, and it was expected that Cena would need to miss around six months to a year.

In one of the most shocking Royal Rumble entries, Cena would make a surprise return after only three months of being gone and go on to win the Rumble match. Every injury Cena has suffered since would end up seeing him miss a few months of work at most before making a quicker-than-expected return.

Worst - Burying The Nexus at SummerSlam

What else could have been included on a list of Cena’s worst in-ring moments? The Nexus as a faction had incredible potential, and WWE seemed to be truly building a crop of talent that would be vital for years to come.

Though SummerSlam 2010 would end up being the match that stopped any momentum the faction had, as they suffered their first major loss. David Otunga confirmed to Chris Van Vliet that the rumors of Cena getting the result changed in his favor were true, saying:

"I don’t know why he wanted to go over, but we knew all day we were supposed to go over, and then things started getting weird, and then they tell us, no, the finish changed, and it’s because John wanted to go over, and we weren’t happy about that. The other guys in the match weren’t happy about that."
David Otunga, Chris Van Vliet

Cena wouldn't be the first to use his status to get creative plans changed the way he wants, and he won't be the last, but this extreme example that stopped the push of several young stars is rough.

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