John Cena steps into Saturday Night’s Main Event this Saturday, December 13, for the last match of a 20+ year career that changed WWE forever. Now a 17-time world champion and freshly crowned Grand Slam winner, Cena’s farewell tour has sent fans, media and wrestlers into full-on reflection mode: when you strip away the memes, the chants and the merch, which matches actually define “Big Match John” at his absolute peak?
Pulling from recent deep-dive lists by Sports Illustrated, Wrestling Inc, TWSN, TheSportster, ESPN and a tidal wave of fan threads and social clips, this ranking zeroes in on in-ring quality, storytelling, atmosphere and long-term impact.
Here are the 10 matches that, more than any others, tell you who John Cena really is when the lights are brightest.
10. John Cena vs AJ Styles – Crown Jewel 2025
By the time Cena and AJ Styles met one last time at Crown Jewel 2025, the rivalry had become a career-spanning mirror for both men. It wasn’t about proving who could “hang” anymore – that had been settled years earlier – it was about closure.
Wrestling Inc and TWSN both highlighted this bout as a late-career masterpiece, pointing to the callbacks to their 2016–17 trilogy, the tributes to peers (from Rusev and Jericho to Sting and Shawn Michaels) and the way both men wrestled with a sense of finality. Social media was packed with fans calling it a 2025 Match of the Year contender, noting how every counter and near fall felt like an acknowledgment of everything they had done for each other’s careers.
If Cena’s retirement tour is a long goodbye, Crown Jewel was the love letter to one of his greatest rivals – a match less about wins and losses and more about two GOAT-level workers saying “thank you” in the only language they know.
9. John Cena vs Rob Van Dam – ECW One Night Stand 2006
If you want to understand how polarizing Cena once was, you start here.
Inside Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom – ECW’s home turf – Cena walked in as the corporate WWE champion and walked straight into a wall of hatred so loud it’s still replayed on video packages nearly two decades later. WWE itself has called it one of the most emotional title matches of that era, and recent retrospectives underline how unique that environment was: “If Cena Wins, We Riot” signs, his shirt being thrown back at him repeatedly, and a crowd that treated him like a foreign invader.
What makes this a great Cena match isn’t just the heat – it’s how he leaned into it. He slowed the pace, wrestled like a deliberate, almost petty heel, and made every hold feel like an insult to the ECW faithful. In the end, RVD – with an assist from Edge – took the WWE Championship and lit a fuse under the “Cena backlash” era. But the match also proved that Cena could thrive in absolutely hostile territory and still deliver a gripping main-event performance.
8. John Cena vs Umaga – Last Man Standing, Royal Rumble 2007
The Last Man Standing war with Umaga at Royal Rumble 2007 is where “Super Cena” really became a thing – and where even some of his harshest critics started admitting the guy could go.
The WWE Championship bout is consistently singled out in modern rankings from SI, TWSN and TheSportster as one of Cena’s most violent, physically demanding showcases. Contemporary reviews of the PPV called the match a standout, praising the brutality and the way Cena sold Umaga as an unstoppable monster before clawing his way back.
The visual that everyone remembers: Cena using the ring ropes themselves to choke Umaga out until the challenger couldn’t answer the 10-count. It was resourceful, desperate and exactly the kind of finish that told you this title reign wasn’t built on lucky escapes – it was built on a champion willing to get just as ugly as the monster in front of him.
7. John Cena vs “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt – Firefly Fun House Match, WrestleMania 36
You can debate whether this is even a “match” in the traditional sense, but you can’t debate its importance to Cena’s story.
The Firefly Fun House at WrestleMania 36 deconstructed two decades of Cena’s persona – from the ruthless aggression rookie to the neon super-hero to the corporate franchise face – and turned it into a surreal psychological horror film. WWE has repeatedly framed it as one of the most unique matches in WrestleMania history, and long-form breakdowns have praised it as a piece of meta-storytelling that weaponized wrestling’s own history against its biggest star.
In the years since, Cena himself has revealed that the match was largely his brainchild and one of the toughest projects of his career, an “exercise in vulnerability” where he willingly picked apart his own legacy. With his 2025 heel turn and retirement tour, fans have gone back to this match as prophetic – especially Bray’s monologue about Cena’s potential to become everything he once fought against.
As his final week winds down, the Firefly Fun House feels less like a weird detour and more like a crucial chapter in understanding who John Cena became at the end.
6. John Cena vs Brock Lesnar vs Seth Rollins – Royal Rumble 2015
On a night where the Royal Rumble match itself was heavily criticized, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship triple threat with Brock Lesnar and Seth Rollins was the shining beacon – and Cena was at the center of it.
Modern best-of lists consistently include this bout as one of Cena’s elite in-ring performances. Rollins provided the aerial chaos, Lesnar the suplex-heavy violence, and Cena anchored the match with timing, selling and constant motion that kept the pace from ever dropping. WWE’s own coverage still leans on the visual of Lesnar hurling bodies around and then being taken out of the match so Cena and Rollins can sprint through a pseudo–main event of their own.
This isn’t just a great Cena match – it’s widely cited as one of the best triple threats in company history, the kind you show people to explain what a modern WWE main event is supposed to feel like.
5. John Cena vs Daniel Bryan – SummerSlam 2013
If you were online in 2013, you remember exactly how this felt.
Daniel Bryan had become the people’s choice; Cena was the corporate face hand-picking him as a challenger, convinced he could prove the “B+ player” talk wrong. The in-ring reality was the opposite: Bryan took advantage of a legitimate Cena elbow injury, chopped him down and pinned him clean in the middle of the ring for the WWE Championship in one of the loudest feel-good finishes of the decade.
Bryan has since talked about that match – and the subsequent Orton cash-in – as a turning point that set up the “Yes Movement” and WrestleMania 30. For Cena, it was another night where he “did business,” eating a definitive loss that elevated a rival into superstardom. Critics and newer rankings
consistently place SummerSlam 2013 firmly in Cena’s top tier, not just for workrate but for the way it captured a fanbase finally getting what they’d been begging for.
4. John Cena vs Edge – TLC Match, Unforgiven 2006
Ask around for Cena’s greatest rival and Edge comes up again and again. Nowhere is that chemistry more obvious than their TLC match in Toronto at Unforgiven 2006.
With Edge as the hometown hero and Cena as the deeply unpopular champion, the stipulation and setting could not have been more stacked against “The Champ.” The WWE Championship hung above the ring, and the Rated-R Superstar seemed to live in this environment; Cena was the outsider learning to survive tables, ladders and chairs in real time.
The finish – an Attitude Adjustment off the ladder through two stacked tables before Cena unhooked the title – has become one of the defining images of his early reign. Recent opinion pieces still list this as a career-defining performance, the night he proved he could thrive in a match type designed for someone else’s legacy.
3. John Cena vs Shawn Michaels – RAW, April 23, 2007
On a random episode of RAW in London, WWE basically said: “Here, Shawn and Cena, just go wrestle.” What followed was nearly an hour of TV that still shows up on lists of the greatest matches in RAW history.
Both SI and Wrestling Inc rank this bout near the very top of Cena’s career catalog, praising the way it slowly built drama, escalated into big near falls and left both men utterly spent by the time Michaels finally connected with Sweet Chin Music. TWSN and multiple fan lists likewise highlight how the match reframed Cena in real time: not as the limited “five moves of doom” guy, but as someone who could hang with one of the most respected in-ring performers ever.
It wasn’t a WrestleMania main event, there was no title on the line – and that’s part of why it endures. For almost 60 minutes, it was just two generational talents proving they didn’t need a stadium or an elaborate story to create something special.
2. John Cena vs CM Punk – Money in the Bank 2011
If you were to freeze one frame of the 2010s WWE “boom,” it might be CM Punk blowing Vince McMahon a kiss while leaving through a sea of Chicago fans with Cena’s WWE Championship.
Money in the Bank 2011 is the match most modern outlets either rank first or second for Cena – ESPN calls it one of his most notable bouts, while SI, TWSN, Wrestling Inc and countless fan lists label it an all-timer.
The story is legendary: Punk’s contract expiring at midnight, his “pipe bomb” promo, McMahon threatening to fire Cena if Punk walked out with the belt. In the ring, you had Cena as the embodiment of the WWE machine and Punk as the rebel trying to burn it down, with a molten hometown crowd essentially booing every breath Cena took.
Cena’s role is crucial – he wrestles his company-man style but refuses a Montreal-style screwjob when McMahon and Laurinaitis try to hand him the match, losing clean instead. It’s a key moment in why, even when fans booed him, they ultimately respected him. And as a complete package – story, crowd, stakes, execution – this is as close as you get to the perfect modern WWE main event.
1. John Cena vs AJ Styles – Royal Rumble 2017
When you survey recent rankings – SI, TWSN, TheSportster, fan polls, social media – one bout keeps bubbling to the top: John Cena vs AJ Styles at the 2017 Royal Rumble.
By then, the rivalry was already a dream feud come to life: the longtime face of WWE against the man who defined TNA and New Japan’s rise. Styles came in with a clean win over Cena from SummerSlam 2016; Cena was chasing a record-tying 16th world title. The match itself rarely leaves the ring, leaning instead on pristine timing, counter-wrestling and layers of escalation as they burn through and then remix each other’s finishers.
What puts it over the top is how complete it feels. The commentary frames the history, the crowd buys every near fall, and the finish – Cena finally putting Styles away to tie Ric Flair’s record – lands as both a personal milestone and a statement that “you can’t wrestle” was always a lie. When people talk about “Big Match John” in the purest in-ring sense, this is the match they’re almost always talking about.
Honorable Mentions: The Ones That Just Missed
Limiting Cena to ten matches is almost cruel, so it’s only fair to shout out a few near-misses that show up again and again in modern lists and fan conversations:
- John Cena vs Cody Rhodes – Street Fight, SummerSlam 2025 – A brutal, emotional title match where Cody finally reclaimed the Undisputed Championship, widely praised as a passing-the-torch moment and one of the best bouts of Cena’s retirement year.
- John Cena vs AJ Styles – SummerSlam 2016 – The middle chapter of their trilogy, ranked highly by Wrestling Inc for its pure drama and “Beat Up John Cena” build.
- John Cena vs JBL – “I Quit” Match, Judgment Day 2005 – A blood-soaked war that TWSN and others highlight as the moment Cena proved he could be a violent, gritty top guy, not just a rapper-turned-hero.
- John Cena’s shocking return and win in the 2008 Royal Rumble, and countless TV bangers against the likes of Cesaro, Kevin Owens, Kurt Angle and more.
As John Cena walks into Washington, D.C., this Saturday for “one last time,” these matches are the reel that will be playing in the minds of fans around the world – the nights where he turned boos into respect, skepticism into classics, and pressure into the kind of big-match magic that earned him “The GOAT” label in the first place.
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