mobanmarketHola amigos and amigettes, welcome to yet another Sunday Supplement. Now in the past we’ve done all sorts of things with the mostly legal supplements, but by far my favorite is lists and you guys seem to agree as they’re many of our most beloved Supplements. So this week we’ll be pairing something beloved (lists) with something…shall we say less beloved (Mr. John Cena). All through the allustrious career of Mr. Cena, he’s had his share of critics (and everyone else’s share too) who knocked everything from his moveset, to his lack of selling, to his inability to understand ring psychology. If you asked one of these critics to name a good John Cena match, many would be hard pressed to, whether out of genuine distaste or just stubborness. We here at Cewsh Reviews have been as harshly critical of the man as anyone, including Vice’s 17 verse long epic poem entitled “Sell the Fucking Leg, You Twat”, but here tonight we’ll be looking back at the matches that show that there’s more to the man than fluorescent colors and jorts. So here they are, the 10 best matches of the Doctor of Thuganomics as categorized by yours truly.
I think some of these may surprise you.
John Cena and Edge. Back in a time when we could only hope that CM Punk would rise above midcard status on ECW and when Randy Orton was just finding his feet as a main eventer, Edge was the rival that first took John Cena to his limits. But rather than Orton’s equal physical gifts, or Punks greater wrestling ability, Edge fought Cena by being everything that Cena wasn’t. Edge was brash, arrogant, and would take any opportunity no matter how villainous to get the title that he craved so much. For an entire year these two battled off and on after Edge first cashed in the first Money in the Bank briefcase to beat a battered Cena for the title back in February. The matches were good, but it took Edge fully getting into Cena’s head by slapping his father and throwing his custom title in the river to really get Cena ready to do some damage. In order to get this match, Cena agreed to leave and go to Smackdown for 3 years if he lost and agreed to let Edge choose the place and the match. Edge chose his hometown of Toronto and a match type he helped make famous and had never lost in, Tables, Ladders and Chairs.
It was a great match, with Cena wrestling a kind of match we’ve never seen him try before, and it was one of the few times when Cena has ever shown genuine anger in a match. By the end, an Attitude Adjustment off the top of a ladder made John Cena WWE Champion again, and put this feud to rest.
For the time being, at least.
This may almost seem quaint now, but there was once a time where nobody booed John Cena at all. He was a beloved up and comer and had tons of fan support all around until somewhere around his feud with Kurt Angle when the “smarks” began to turn on him. From there on there was always a smattering of boos to be had here and there, nothing truly major, but WWE never acknowledged it until Triple H won a tournament to get a shot at John Cena’s WWE Championship at Wrestlemania and he promptly began saying all the things those vocal booers had been saying all along. That Cena couldn’t wrestle, that he was all heart and no skill, that he didn’t have what it took in the main event. Cena’s oinly comeback to all of these accusations was a simple “You’ll see”, as his boos grew louder and the heel Triple H’s cheers grew louder..
Then came the match itself, preceded by two of the most legendary entrances in wrestling history with Cena’s gangster drive in (with the widdle CM Punk along for the ride) and Triple H’s crazy Conan the Barbarian shenanigans. The pageantry was great, but the real story was the atmosphere. The dominant star with the crowd in his corner against the beleaguered young champ trying to shake off boos he wasn’t expecting was a story told so well, and over the course of the match Triple H essentially flat out turned face with everything from playing to the crowd to an outright crotch chop tease of DX. Ultimately Cena beat him, going a long way to cementing himself as the top guy of this generation along the way, but while the match is often forgotten when great Wrestlemania main events are discussed, it shouldn’t be. This may have been the hottest crowd for such a main event in our lifetime.
The year was 2002. In those long gone days of yore, there was no “the Champ is Here”, no movie deals or endorsements and not even any “Word Life”. Back then John Cena was just a hungry kid down in OVW who dreamed of hitting in big in the big leagues. On June 27th, he got his wish as Kurt Angle made an open challenge to anyone in the locker room that he had never wrestle before. In response, out came the spikey haired, bright red underwear clad Cena, positively rippling with muscles and enthusiasm. Angle gave him the once over and asked him incredulously what it was that made Cena think he had what it took to be in the ring with an Olympic Gold Medalist. Cena replied in two words, “Ruthless. Aggression.” and the future of World Wrestling Entertainment shifted a bit.
What followed was perhaps the most technically well wrestled match of Cena’s career as he and Angle traded near falls, counters, reversals, suplexes and roll ups all over the ring, with the younger Cena constantly getting the better of Angle. Even here you can see all the hallmarks that turned Cena into what he would become, from the boundless charisma and enthusiasm to the knowledge of how to feed through moves to keep the excitement rising up without deflating the crowd. Kurt Angle walked the newcomers through a really fantastic match before finally beating him and retreating to the back, looking genuinely shocked at the fight that was put up by this total no name. I wish I could tell you that everything fell into place for Cena after that, but it didn’t and he struggled for years to accomplish anything close to as good as his first 15 minutes of fame. But that’s more of a compliment to this match than anything else.
There are some matches that are great because they’re technical wrestling showcases. There are some matches that are great because they contain high risk moments that take your breath away. There are some matches that are great because they achieve something legendary in their storytelling. And then there are some times when a match can be great simply by existing.
When Rob Van Dam won the Money in the Bank Ladder Match at Wrestlemania 22, he wasted absolutely no time in telling the world exactly what the deal was. He walked right up to John Cena on Raw and informed him that since he could decide when and where he’d get his match, he wanted a home field advantage. So he cashed it in for a title match against John Cena at ECW One Night Stand at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Which is somewhat akin to challenging Derek Jeter to a fight at Fenway Stadium in Boston, not exactly ideal for Jeter. Cena took it like a man, even while the fans in attendance showered him with the mother of all boos.
See, John Cena had come to represent everything these smarks hated about wrestling, and now that the anti-christ had walked into their house to face their champion, they let him have it like nothing i’ve ever seen before, or would see until Cena met Punk in Chicago (more on that later). Undaunted by this, Cena produced perhaps his most indelible image as a champion walking to the ring, unafraid and unconcerned. Accompanied by this is an even more indelible image, of a crowd afraid of what may come.
When it became clear that the fans wouldn’t warm to him, he started taunting them, driving them even wilder as he and Van Dam squared off to see which would be champion. Cena’s gradual decent into heel tactics at the behest of the crowd is not only one of his best performances, but was also an ingenious ploy to keep those fans hot from bell to bell. When Edge finally darted in to spear Cena and cost him the title, the man who had been the biggest heel in the building not half an hour earlier was regaled with chants of “Thank you, Edge!” from a joyous crowd.
“Having watched this entire match, I have a jumble of emotions towards it. At various points it was fun, boring, hard hitting, a little weak, fantastic, a little lame, and a million other things that are all wrapped up into one full hour of wrestling. Iron man matches are notoriously difficult to do, because of how hard it is to keep the crowd involved, and there is no way to deny that they did that all the way through, and these two guys have a chemistry that I find it hard to believe that anyone can deny anymore, no matter how little they like either man. Yes, you know what? This was a fucking great match. It takes some thinking in order to wrap your whole mind around the experience as a single match, but greatness is what happened here.
Could it have been better? It’s hard to say, though certain points probably could have been better. Should Orton have won? It’s my opinion that he absolutely should have. But is this one of the best matches this year? Yeah, it really, really is.”
Source: Cewsh Reviews WWE Bragging Right 2009
This is the first match on the countdown thus far that we personally got a chance to review. It got a 90 (consider how that puts the rest of these matches in perspective, score wise). It didn’t just get that score because this match had an absolutely epic backstory, or because these two were at their absolute peak in terms of storytelling, or because its another in an endless series of matches proving that John Cena is the king of gimmick matches. It was great because of all of those things, true, but way more because it was just so damned FUN. For one entire hour John Cena and Randy Orton kept their audience’s rapt attention as they pulled every rabbit out of every hat, from announce table spots, to clever reversals, to Randy actually trying to DETONATE JOHN CENA WITH PYRO. It was a rollicking adventure from start to finish and when the smoke cleared, John Cena had won this epic feud closing contest, and quite a few people left an arena having gotten their money’s worth and more.
Well that’ll do it for the first half of our Best Matches of John Cena list. Later this week we will conclude it with the 5 best matches that the man has ever taken part in, with some controversial choices to be sure and more food for the ol’ thinkbox. If you’d care to argue one way or another on any of these matches, please feel free. After all, John Cena is the best/worst wrestler of all time.
Right?
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