Former John Cena Rival Names Greatest WWE Match They Had Together
A WWE Hall of Famer who wrestled John Cena many times recalls the best match they had together.
The in-ring career of future WWE Hall of Famer John Cena ended on December 13th when he lost to Gunther at Saturday Night’s Main Event in Washington, DC.
Even though Cena said he would never give up during his legendary 23-year WWE career, giving up is exactly what he did as he tapped out to Gunther’s sleeper to end the match. After it was over, fans were sad, but also showed Cena a lot of love as he left his sneakers in the ring and walked out of a WWE building as a wrestler for the final time.
John Cena retires as the record-breaking 17-time WWE World Champion, which is the most of all time since he broke the 16-time World Champion tie he had with Ric Flair.
It was at WrestleMania 21, way back in 2005, when John Cena won his first WWE Championship from John Bradshaw Layfield, who had held the title for about nine months going into the match.
While speaking to Videogamer.com, JBL spoke about how many people in WWE knew that Cena would be a top guy for many years, but it was hard to know Cena would be considered the Greatest of All Time by the time his career was done.
“Obviously I was there, I was the one that dropped the first title to him and he’d have been 17 time world Champion whether I was there or not, so I don’t want to take any credit for it and I’m not, I think we knew John was the guy, I don’t think we knew he was the guy that was going to be 17 time world champion to do all these movies and become one of the greatest of all time, nobody can see that.
I’ve been so proud, he has been one of the greatest representatives of professional wrestling, sports, entertainment, whatever you want to call it, in the history of this business, he has been so good for this business. He is such a respectful guy, he’s such a smart guy, he carries himself so well, everything he does is first class.
This business is really lucky to have him and the era he came along in the PG era, following the attitude era, there aren’t many people and probably it may be one and it may be him that could have done that. During that era to go from somebody flipping off the boss to all this crazy stuff we were doing in wrestling to a PG era and you can’t curse and still put people in seats and John Cena did it and I don’t know if there’s anybody else in the business history that could have done that like he did it.”
JBL Loved “I Quit Match” With John Cena
In the main event of WWE Judgment Day 2005, John Cena and JBL had a brutal “I Quit” Match for the WWE Championship that was a bloody battle that saw Cena retain his title to put an end to the feud.
That match is considered one of Cena’s best matches from his first decade in WWE, and JBL called it the greatest match they had together.
“It was the ‘I quit match’ after the WrestleMania match, which I knew was done. The WrestleMania match was done just for a reason, to get him the title, get him the title clean and then after that we had the ‘I Quit match’ and I’d wrestled John on all these in house shows, live events they call them now and I knew how good he was, I knew how tough he was and I wanted to show that to the rest of the world, it’s a world of difference between going from an eight minute match to a 30 to 45 minute match that you have to really be able to take people on a rollercoaster, a completely different dynamic.
Anybody can do an eight minute match or almost anybody. I knew how good he was and I wanted to show the world how good he was and I thought that ‘I Quit Match’ would show that and any champion that comes along that people want to get behind at some point have gotta walk through hell.
Steve (Austin) had to walk through hell with Bret (Hart), Triple H and The Rock, he had to do something where you have to believe in him and I thought, if he can beat me in an ‘I Quit match’ it’ll show how good and tough he is and I thought he did a great job.”
Even though he has stepped away from WWE as a wrestler, John Cena is still keeping his eye on things since he commented on his friend Matt Cardona returning to the company on the first SmackDown episode of the year.