John Cena walks into Saturday Night’s Main Event this Saturday, December 13, not just as “The GOAT” and “The Last Real Champion,” but as a record-breaking 17-time world champion closing the book on over two decades at the top of WWE. WWE’s own records now credit him with 14 WWE Championship reigns and three World Heavyweight Championship runs, for a total of 17 world titles under the company banner – more than anyone in history. 

As his farewell week unfolds, fans, wrestlers and media are all asking the same question: out of those 17 reigns, which ones truly define John Cena as a world champion?

The Top 5 John Cena World Championship Reigns

1. “Super Cena Is Born” – WWE Championship (Sept 2006–Oct 2007, 380 days)
2. “Fantastic First Run” – First WWE Championship Reign (Apr 2005–Jan 2006, 280 days)
3. “Proving Himself as a Headliner” – Second WWE Championship Reign (Jan–Jun 2006, 133 days)
4. “Unseating The Rock” – WWE Championship Reign After WrestleMania 29 (Apr–Aug 2013, 133 days)
5. “Record-Setting 17th Run” – Undisputed WWE Championship (Apr–Aug 2025, 105 days)

All 17 reigns matter to his legacy. But these five tell the most important chapters of the John Cena story.

1. “Super Cena Is Born”

WWE Championship (3rd reign) – Sept 17, 2006 to Oct 2, 2007 – 380 days

If you’re looking for the run where John Cena stopped being a rising star and became the standard-bearer, this is it.

Cena won the WWE Championship from Edge in a wild TLC match at Unforgiven 2006 in Edge’s hometown of Toronto, kicking off a 380-day reign that still sits among the longest of the modern era.    Over the next year, he ran a gauntlet of challengers that reads like a mid-2000s greatest-hits playlist:

• Edge, in the closing chapter of their career-defining feud.
• Umaga, whose Last Man Standing classic with Cena at Royal Rumble 2007 is now considered one of his best title defenses.  
• Shawn Michaels, including the WrestleMania 23 main event and the near-hour RAW epic in London that WWE and ESPN still single out as an all-timer.  
• The Great Khali, who got the best matches of his career in back-to-back PPV title shots.  
• Bobby Lashley and Randy Orton, rounding out a run that touched almost every top name of that era.  

Stats-wise, it’s absurd. Between April 3, 2005 and October 2, 2007, Cena held the WWE title for 793 of 913 days across three reigns – a run fans and historians on social media point to when they call him the face of that entire generation. 

Fan opinion at the time was divided – some were burned out on the “Super Cena” booking, others lived for every title defense – but in hindsight, the 2006–07 reign has aged incredibly well. Threads on r/WWE and Facebook now look back on it as the era when he shut down doubts about his in-ring ability through classics with Edge, Umaga and Michaels. 

If you want the purest example of John Cena as an unstoppable, fighting champion who still sold his heart out for every challenger, this is the reign you circle in red.

2. “Fantastic First Run”

First WWE Championship Reign – Apr 3, 2005 to Jan 8, 2006 – 280 days

This is where the John Cena mythos starts as a world champion.

At WrestleMania 21, Cena defeated JBL to win his first WWE Championship, kicking off a 280-day reign that showed WWE – and a whole new wave of fans – that the “Doctor of Thuganomics” could carry the entire company. 

Key chapters in that first run read like a coming-of-age story:

• A violent “I Quit” rematch with JBL at Judgment Day 2005, remembered for its blood and brutality, where Cena proved he could thrive in an old-school, violent title match.  
• Summer defenses against Christian and Chris Jericho, solidifying him as RAW’s centerpiece after the draft.  
• A fall feud with Kurt Angle, culminating in a Triple Threat at Taboo Tuesday with Shawn Michaels that’s still praised in modern match rankings.  
• Surviving an Elimination Chamber at New Year’s Revolution, only to have his heart broken seconds later when a blood-soaked, exhausted Cena fell to Edge’s first Money in the Bank cash-in.  

Fans who were kids in 2005–06 constantly pop up on social and in fan groups, talking about this reign like their Hogan era – the moment they chose Cena as their guy.    Bleacher Report places this reign at No. 2 on its own list of Cena’s championship runs, emphasizing how it set the template for what a John Cena title reign looked like: hard-fought defenses, a never-give-up attitude, and a champion who made his challengers feel bigger just by standing opposite him. 

It wasn’t the longest story he ever told, but it might be the purest. This was John Cena becoming the guy in real time.

3. “Proving Himself as a Headliner”

Second WWE Championship Reign – Jan 29, 2006 to Jun 11, 2006 – 133 days

If the first reign made Cena popular, the second reign proved he belonged in the main-event conversation forever.

Just three weeks after losing the title to Edge, Cena took it back at the 2006 Royal Rumble, then set his sights on Triple H in the build to WrestleMania 22.    In Chicago – one of the most hostile crowds he’d ever faced – Cena tapped out The Game with the STF in a match modern lists still hold up as a turning point. 

From there, the reign reads like a crash course in main-event survival:

• A Triple Threat vs Triple H and Edge at Backlash, where he retained amid chaos.  
• The start of his war with Rob Van Dam, setting the stage for the infamous ECW One Night Stand 2006 title loss in front of one of the most hostile crowds in company history.  

Bleacher Report ranks this run in the top three of his career specifically because of how much was riding on it: not just whether Cena could headline a WrestleMania, but whether he could carry himself like a true centerpiece champion in the middle of the most divided crowds WWE had seen in years. 

Older fans on forums still debate whether the reign was “overbooked” or perfectly chaotic, but there’s a general consensus that this period – Edge, Triple H, Van Dam, the ECW backlash – is when Cena stopped being a promising project and became a made man. 

4. “Unseating The Rock”

WWE Championship (11th reign) – Apr 7, 2013 to Aug 18, 2013 – 133 days

Eight years after his first world title, John Cena went from new face to legacy act – and this reign was the emotional payoff to a two-year story.

At WrestleMania 29, Cena finally beat The Rock for the WWE Championship, avenging his loss from the previous year and closing the book on a feud WWE itself marketed as “Once in a Lifetime” turned “Twice in a Lifetime.” 

What followed was a compact but loaded run:

• A feud with Ryback, who turned heel just to challenge Cena, resulting in a Last Man Standing match at Extreme Rules and a brutal Three Stages of Hell bout at Payback.  
• A short but memorable program with Mark Henry, whose fake retirement promo and subsequent attack on Cena remains one of the most celebrated RAW segments of the 2010s, leading to a heated title match at Money in the Bank.  
• And finally, the handoff to Daniel Bryan at SummerSlam 2013 – a match that modern ESPN and Bleacher Report pieces consistently rank among Cena’s best, and the night Bryan’s “Yes Movement” truly went supernova.  

On social media, this reign gets a lot of love in retrospect because of how selfless the arc looks now: Cena dethrones a legend in Rock, then uses that credibility to elevate Bryan to the next level in one clean strike. 

It wasn’t the longest or most dominant run he ever had – but emotionally, it’s one of the richest, tying together eras and handing the ball to the next underdog hero.

5. “Record-Setting 17th Run”

Undisputed WWE Championship – Apr 20, 2025 to Aug 3, 2025 – 105/106 days

No list is complete without the reign that changed the record books forever.

At WrestleMania 41 Night 2 in Las Vegas, John Cena – freshly turned heel after aligning with The Rock at Elimination Chamber – defeated Cody Rhodes to win the Undisputed WWE Championship and become a 17-time world champion, breaking Ric Flair’s long-standing record. 

The match itself instantly became one of the most polarizing main events in WrestleMania history. Interference from Travis Scott, Cena’s low blow and the belt shot finish led to a wave of backlash online, with threads and posts calling it one of the worst Mania endings ever – “a waste of Cody’s incredible babyface reign” and “offensively stupid” are phrases that show up again and again. 

And yet, the reign that followed has already taken on a different life in the eyes of many fans and analysts:

• Bleacher Report ranks this record-setting run in its top five Cena reigns, pointing out how the story of Cena holding the title “hostage” as a villain had enormous potential, even if the heel turn execution wasn’t perfect.  
• Cena’s first major defense came against longtime rival Randy Orton at Backlash in St. Louis – a match praised for its atmosphere and for flipping their usual roles, with Orton as hometown hero and Cena as the despised champion.  
• He later renewed his rivalry with CM Punk at Night of Champions 2025 in Saudi Arabia, with their last world title meeting devolving into chaos thanks to Seth Rollins and Money in the Bank intrigue. Cena ultimately retained, and he has since called Punk’s emotional promo and their reconciliation one of the most meaningful moments of his entire career.  

The reign ended at SummerSlam Night 2 in a brutal Street Fight at MetLife Stadium, where Cody Rhodes finally beat Cena clean in a match outlets like the New York Post and Bleacher Report graded as the match of the night – some fans on Reddit even jokingly called it a “6-star” performance. 

Emotionally, this reign is complicated: it gave Cena the record, broke millions of Cody fans’ hearts, and then – through the SummerSlam rematch and Cena’s babyface turn before the show – turned into a powerful passing-the-torch moment on his way out. That tension between greed, legacy, regret and redemption is exactly why it already hangs over his farewell week like a storm cloud and a sunset at the same time.

Why These Five Stand Above the Rest

There are 12 other world title reigns you could make a case for – from the brief but fiery 2010 run where he brutalized Batista, to his World Heavyweight Championship return from injury in 2008, to underrated later stints that quietly filled gaps while WWE rebuilt around new faces. 

But these five reigns keep coming up in:

• Data and rankings – Bleacher Report’s detailed 2025 list of all 17 runs, ESPN’s career retrospectives, Cagematch duration and defense stats.  
• Media narratives – People, CBS Sports, ESPN and others framing WrestleMania 41, the Super Cena era and the Rock/Bryan transitions as career signposts.  
• Fan memory – Reddit threads, Facebook groups and X posts where fans reminisce about being kids in 2005–07, debate the 380-day reign, relitigate Cody’s loss at WrestleMania 41, or celebrate SummerSlam 2025 as the real masterpiece of Cena’s final world-title story.  

Put together, they form a kind of emotional timeline:

• Young star proving he belongs (First & Second WWE reigns)
• Undisputed ace holding the belt for a year while the world boos and he just keeps winning (Super Cena)
• Established icon unseating The Rock and handing the torch to Daniel Bryan
• Aging legend breaking the all-time record in the messiest, most human way possible, then giving it back in a classic to Cody Rhodes

As Cena heads into that final bell against GUNTHER this Saturday with “17-time world champion” officially etched into history, these are the reigns that echo the loudest – the stretches of time when John Cena wasn’t just the guy with the belt, he was the belt.

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