8 Best Rivalries of John Cena's WWE Career (Ranked)

At WWE Cash within the Financial institution 2024, John Cena delivered the information that he’ll retire from wrestling in 2025. The announcement signifies that we’ve got not more than 18 months left of the 16-time world champion’s profession, and, as such, consideration will rightly flip to what followers nonetheless wish to see from him earlier than he hangs up his boots. Nevertheless, his impending retirement has allowed many to replicate on what his legendary profession has introduced us up to now.

He should still have some recent match-ups left in him, however, since 2002, John Cena has blended it up with a few of the easiest to ever do it, build up an unimaginable checklist of high opponents within the course of. So, from his meteoric rise to changing into an trade veteran, let GIVEMESPORT take you down reminiscence lane as we rank John Cena’s eight greatest WWE rivals.

8 Bray Wyatt

The 2 confronted off at a number of WrestleManias

Beginning with a basic battle of fine vs evil, John Cena spent the primary half of 2014 locked in a psychological battle with The Eater of Worlds. For followers, Bray Wyatt was the shot within the arm that the WWE roster wanted, and lots of gravitated in direction of him as a future star following the departure of CM Punk and the harm to Daniel Bryan. Though, in typical style, Cena didn’t let the darkness win the day.

Many are nonetheless of the opinion that John Cena’s fixed victories over Wyatt have been unneeded and finally broken the mystique of his character in the long term, however the segments involving the 2 created really fascinating tv. Plus, after initially being obsessive about the deconstruction of Cena, the Firefly Funhouse match the 2 shared in 2020 will go down in historical past as one of the genius concepts in wrestling historical past, as Bray lastly stood tall over a defeated Cena, making an impression on followers that they received’t quickly overlook.

7 Kurt Angle

The Olympic gold medalist helped Cena breakout

Subsequent, let’s take you again to John Cena’s well-known WWE debut. It’s a second that has been replayed numerous instances earlier than, so the road about having ‘ruthless aggression’ is etched within the minds of virtually all wrestling followers, but it surely’s truthful to say there might not have been many higher choices to mattress Cena into the WWE panorama than the Olympic Hero.

With 4 pay-per-view one-on-one matches on this sequence, Kurt Angle was the measuring stick for Cena for nearly 4 years, they usually went from their first encounter in 2002 to clashing over the WWE Championship in 2005. Kurt was pivotal in making John the primary occasion participant he’d go on to be for the next many years.

6 Triple H

The Recreation helped solidify Cena as a world champion

When on high for so long as each Triple H and John Cena have been, it was inevitable that they’d meet on the largest stage. The primary time they met in singles motion was in the primary occasion of WrestleMania 22, the place the King of Kings tapped out to an STF, they usually’d meet an extra 5 instances one-on-one, together with as lately as 2018 on the Biggest Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia.

Cena and Triple H have been as pure a babyface and heel duo as you might discover, and The Recreation performed the proper villain for John to beat throughout their showdowns. They met in tag workforce matches, handicap matches, triple threats and extra through the years, and it felt like a unending tussle to be the most effective.

5 AJ Types

The Phenomenal One gave Cena a few of his greatest matches

All through Cena’s dominant run throughout the 2000s and 2010s, AJ Types was constructing his identify exterior WWE. Working for TNA and New Japan Professional Wrestling, many thought he’d by no means cross the boundary into the corporate dominated by Cena. But, in 2016, the 2 locked eyes and the ambiance was palpable. Followers have been seeing an unattainable dream match occur in entrance of their eyes.

Fortunately, the 2 shared unimaginable chemistry within the ring, placing on a trilogy of superior matches throughout the span of eight months and including on a fourth on an episode of SmackDown in 2018. AJ even received the primary two conferences in opposition to Cena, one thing which delighted lots of Types’ career-long followers, and John’s victory of their third encounter will go down in historical past because the second he received his sixteenth world title and tied the report. Unforgettable.

4 CM Punk

Punk was every little thing that Cena wasn’t

Lined in tattoos, anti-authority and well-liked with the followers, it all the time appeared as if CM Punk was the precise reverse of John Cena. It all the time felt as if the Chicagoan was preventing an uphill battle to be seen in the identical mild because the now 16-time world champion, but it surely all climaxed once they met in Punk’s hometown of Chicago in 2011 when the Second Metropolis Saint received his first WWE Championship within the firm’s first five-star match in a few years. Plus, within the lead-up, we received the notorious pipebomb promo which shook the trade to its very core.

The pair circled one another all through 2011 and 2012. Punk went on his unimaginable 434-day reign on high of the corporate, however even then, an influence wrestle existed between the 2 as they battled for most important occasion slots and the proper to be thought of the most effective. They’re two icons of the trendy period of WWE, and their clashes enhanced each males’s careers for the higher.

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3 The Rock

Their feud was so good that ‘One in a Lifetime’ occurred twice

A storyline spanning two years and three WrestleManias, John Cena vs The Rock noticed two of wrestling’s largest ever icons meet in a ‘As soon as In A Lifetime’ encounter. In fact, as everyone knows, as soon as become twice, they usually ended up having two clashes on the largest stage, however, when a match is as large as this, it’s no shock that WWE needed to arrange the primary match the day after ‘Mania 27 and proceed it into ‘Mania 29.

The rivalry itself was aided by occasions away from the ring, as Cena’s loss to The Rock in 2012 got here in the identical yr as John’s real-life divorce, permitting WWE to play up the concept that the ‘As soon as In A Lifetime’ match had sparked a downfall in all areas of Cena’s life. This led to the last word redemption one yr later, because the WWE Championship modified arms in New Jersey. It was a conflict between two real legends that was backed by a narrative and noticed followers get greater than initially thought.

2 Edge

Edge was the proper slimy villain for Cena to beat

Starting when Cena grew to become the primary to fall sufferer to the Cash within the Financial institution briefcase in 2006, Edge’s run on the high noticed him do battle with the chief of the Cenation proper up till his first retirement in 2011. The pair fought over each the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships on a number of events and even competed in a WrestleMania match in a triple risk with The Large Present in 2009.

Their feuds have been typically very private, too, and The Rated R Famous person even entered Cena’s residence throughout their rivalry and struck his father. Plus, Edge was chargeable for placing his personal spin on the ‘spinner’ WWE Championship, by having Lita throw John’s iconic title right into a river to introduce his personal design.

1 Randy Orton

The duo’s careers will endlessly be linked

If you consider John Cena, it isn’t lengthy earlier than you consider Randy Orton. The careers of The Apex Predator and The Face That Runs The Place have been intertwined since they each debuted, and each wrestling icon wants a rival to push them on to the subsequent stage. The pair merely wouldn’t have had the identical stage of influence if it wasn’t for one another.

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Cena and Orton have had an astonishing 21 broadcasted matches through the years, and that’s in the event you solely rely the instances during which they met one-on-one. Together with all match constellations similar to triple threats and even Royal Rumbles, they’ve been concerned in upwards of 90 matches collectively. Whether or not it was Randy at his psychotic greatest or as a part of The Authority later in his profession, there’s no getting away from the truth that Orton has been Cena’s most iconic foe for many years, and perhaps there’s another match in it for them earlier than John hangs up his boots subsequent yr.