After celebrating the 20 years in WWE of Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar and Batista earlier in the year , it is perhaps time to celebrate the most important WWE star of the last 20 years in John Cena who will celebrate his 20th anniversary this June and WWE are celebrating it as Cena month. John Cena is a 16 time World Champion in WWE in which he has 13 WWE titles and 3 World Heavyweight championships. He was the main star for WWE for over 15 years. All the young WWE fans know one name and that is John Cena.
Without saying anything else, let’s look at the incredible 20 Year Journey of John Cena in WWE.
The Debut (2002)
It was the 24th June 2002 episode of Raw where Vince McMahon said he wanted Ruthless Aggression from his stars and on June 27th episode of SmackDown Kurt Angle was in the ring issuing an open challenge and a young John Cena walled out and had a great match with Kurt Angle that impressed everybody and the phrase Ruthless Aggression took off.
Doctor of Thuganomics (2002-2004)
There is an interesting story behind this character, John Cena was about to lose his job but Stephanie McMahon gave him a chance and he rapped his away to Saving his job and becoming the Doctor of Thuganomics and it was awesome to see John rapping and insulting all his opponents wearing gold chain, shorts and doing promos. After that John Cena started climbing the ladder and having big Matches against the likes of Eddie Guerrero, Undertaker among others and he beat them and after chasing the WWE championship he did not win it but he became a crowd favorite with this gimmick.
The titles keep on coming (2004- 2006)
In 2004, John Cena started getting the push from the WWE and he first won the United States Championship from Big Show at WrestleMania 20. John Cena won the United States Championship 3 times in a span of 1 year and it was clear that John was made for bigger things and the moment finally came at WrestleMania 21 where he beat JBL to win his first WWE championship which was the first of 16 in his career. John Cena had the spinner title made and it became a staple and a great seller amongst the kids who brought a lot of these. Cena beat the likes of Chris Jericho, Christian and would keep his title till the No Way out PPV where Edge would cash in Money in the bank and take the WWE championship from John Cena.
Also Read | Top 5 Matches of John Cena
Becoming the Villain (2006-2008)
John Cena had gone from becoming one of the crowd favorites to the one who they booed the loudest even though he was not a heel and that was because they felt that John Cena was getting everything and the others got nothing. John Cena won the title back from Edge at Royal Rumble 2006 before feuding with Triple H at WrestleMania 22 where again he won the match. It touched an all time high at ECW One Night Stand where the crowd said If Cena wins we Riot and Cena lost the WWE championship that night to the eruption of the crowd. After that John Cena had one of his best feuds with Edge that Raj over for months and they had great matches and it became personal and it culminated in a TLC match where John Cena threw Edge on top of 2 tables to win the title back.
The Return in 2008
John Cena was out after a bad injury and no one expected him to return anytime soon but when he returned at Royal Rumble 2008 everyone was left stunned and he won the Royal Rumble match and challenged for the WWE championship but he lost and was unable to win the title. In Survivor Series in 2008 John Cena defeated Chris Jericho to win the World Heavyweight championship again to the Boos of the fans.
Also Read | 20 Years of Brock Lesnar
Feuds with Randy Orton and Batista (2008-2010)
From 2008 till WrestleMania 26 in 2010 John Cena was enrolled in feuds with both Randy Orton and Batista and he would near Randy Orton first after lots of attempts in an I Quit Match to win the WWE championship again but after sometime Me McMahon did the heel work and allowed Batista to pin Cena and win the WWE championship which Would be ultimately settled at WrestleMania 26 where John beat Dave to win the WWE championship and would again retain in another I Quit Match.
Twice in a Lifetime (2011-2013)
After WrestleMania 27 where John Cena lost the WWE championship to Miz due to the Rock this started the dream feud between Cena and Rock where the main event of WrestleMania 28 was set 1 year ago and both of these men went all out to attack and embarrass each other and they had 2 matches at WrestleMania 28 and 29 where Rock won the first match and John Cena won the return match for the WWE championship at WrestleMania 29.
The US title open challenge And AJ Styles (2015-2017)
The last thing that I will talk about is the 2015 United States Championship open challenge by John Cena which he did week after week and new stars got the chance to have their career defining moments against John Cena in a title match. Cesaro, Sami Zayn, Dean Ambrose, Kane, Neville and they were great Matches. Kevin Owens debuted attacking John Cena and they had a greR 3 match feud which established Kevin Owens..
However it was the Rivalry with AJ Styles which turned the fans around John Cena, he and AJ Styles had 2 of the best matches in recent WWE history and the matches at SummerSlam 2016 and Royal Rumble 2017 were among his very best. And now that John Cena is in Hollywood and not in WWE all the time , the fans love him even more and more than likely we will get to see John Cena wrestle at SummerSlam later this year against Theory for the United States Championship.
Also Read: 20 Years of Randy Orton in WWE
