John Cena Explains Why He Had To Win Most Of His WWE Matches

John Cena is a 16-time world champion in WWE, and for fans who watched him during his prime, they're very aware of the fact that Cena very rarely lost matches.

During Cena's heyday, the phrase "LOL Cena Wins" even became a thing on social media, a sarcastic play on how often WWE's top star at the time came out on the winning side of things.

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Cena spoke with Collider recently, and the topic of his high winning percentage came up. Cena explained why it was necessary during his peak years for his losses to be rare.

“One of the biggest hang-ups in the middle portion of my career was that, spoiler alert, John wins. What people don’t understand is, I think now, maybe, as we begin to reflect back here on this last run of like, ‘Hey, man, I was in it for the long haul.’”
John Cena

Cena went on to explain how the rarity of his losses made it more impactful when it would actually happen. Specifically, Cena mentioned his losses to Rob Van Dam at One Night Stand 2006, Kevin Owens at Elimination Chamber 2015, and The Rock at WrestleMania 28.

Surprisingly, Cena didn't mention his loss to CM Punk at Money In The Bank 2011, generally considered one of the best matches of his career.

Another match with Punk in 2025 is something that wrestling fans have been clamoring for ever since Punk returned to the company and Cena announced his farewell tour.

"The way you make those losses impactful is sometimes you’ve got to win, and sometimes you’ve got to win a lot. Any time you can pass energy on to somebody, that’s kind of the life cycle of the business. You come in an unknown and, hopefully, you get the flywheel spinning, you create all this energy on your way out, you pay it forward, you pass it off," Cena explained.

Cena is in the midst of his farewell tour with WWE, making 2025 his last year as wrestler. He will enter this year's Royal Rumble in Indianapolis, and there are rumors of a possible match with Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41.

MORE: Latest Reports On Cody Rhodes vs John Cena WrestleMania 41 Plans

Regardless of what happens in his final year, there's little doubt that Cena will go down as one of the greatest of all time. It's fair to say that if he'd have been booked to have lost as many matches as he won, that probably wouldn't be the case.

Plus, Cena is far from the only top star in WWE history to be booked in this manner; Hulk Hogan and Roman Reigns would like a word.

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