The next upcoming WWE events may be the biggest the wrestling organization has seen in years, mainly because it's the last ride for its greatest superstar. There was once a time when many fans might've groaned at the thought of John Cena's return, but the wrestler-turned-actor is not the unbeatable force he once was in his prime. Now, as he prepares for his final WrestleMania match, Cena spoke about why the wrestling organization booked him to win so often in the middle of his career.
Cena, who is currently the odds-on favorite to win the Royal Rumble, spoke to Collider about the "LOL Cena wins" era -- AKA the time it seemed The Champ couldn't be taken out by anyone. It even got to a point where he defeated Rey Mysterio for the title the same night the luchador won it and never gave him a rematch. With that in mind, the Peacemaker actor was put in the spot about some of those wins that fans felt was a little much, but he justified it in a great way:
One of the biggest hang-ups in the middle portion of my career was that, spoiler alert, John wins. What people don’t understand is, I think now, maybe, as we begin to reflect back here on this last run of like, ‘Hey, man, I was in it for the long haul.’ The way you make those losses impactful is sometimes you’ve got to win, and sometimes you’ve got to win a lot. Any time you can pass energy on to somebody, that’s kind of the life cycle of the business. You come in an unknown and, hopefully, you get the flywheel spinning, you create all this energy on your way out, you pay it forward, you pass it off.
I can buy the excuse that the WWE would want to keep John Cena looking as strong as possible, as the company often protects its top stars like Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes similarly. The top talents of the wrestling institution are often the winningest, and as one of the winningest champions in the program's history, Cena was protected quite well. He didn't lose often, and if he did, it was even rarer to lose the feud against a would-be challenger.
At the same time, I'm sure not even John Cena remembers just how egregious the Super Cena run could be at times. There was once a time when he and Randy Orton defeated damn near the entire roster in one night and only lost due to interference. He has had 2297 matches in his WWE career and he's won a little over 78% of them. Even in terms of speaking about a scripted product, that's pretty wild.
That said, John Cena's days as a dominant champion are over. I think there are reasons he won't win the Royal Rumble, and the fact he's had a much tougher time in the ring than he did in his glory days makes it seem as though he's due for a loss. Even so, he's still won eight of his last ten matches, so maybe Super Cena isn't as gone as we all like to think.
Rumors swirled recently that John Cena may challenge Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship, though it depends on whether Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has a match. Unfortunately, The Rock's latest WWE appearance gave little to indicate if he'll be at the big event, so we're left to speculate on the plan for Cena.
Hopefully, we'll have more insight after watching the Royal Rumble, which goes down on February 1. CinemaBlend will continue to track what's going on in the WWE until then and any exciting rumors as we get closer to WrestleMania 41.
