For many people in the 21st Century -- not just fans -- John Cena is the face of pro wrestling. After all, he spent much of his WWE career as a successor to Hulk Hogan -- a heroic role model who had the superhuman ability to overcome the odds simply because he never gave up, much to the joy of children around the world.
While good guys eventually coming out on top is the name of the game for pro wrestling, sometimes Cena was booked as TOO good at overcoming the odds. This tendency was so rampant that his detractors started dubbing him “Super Cena” as the 'CENA WINS LOL' meme began to proliferate. It’s hard to argue against it, so let’s take a look at some times where Big Match John was way too overpowered.
10 Super Cena Buries The Intellectual Savior of the Masses (2013)
John Cena’s whole character is about never giving up and coming out on top with the odds stacked against him, but sometimes that tends to border on self-parody. When Damien Sandow cashed in his Money in the Bank contract on Cena on an episode of Raw, the World Heavyweight Champion was pretty beat-up after Alberto Del Rio destroyed his arm the previous night at Hell in a Cell.
It felt right that the opportunistic heel would take out a wounded Cena, but Sandow managed to lose to a one-armed John Cena, becoming the first wrestler in MITB history to cash in and lose.
9 Super Cena Requires Supernatural Intervention To Lose (2014)
Gimmick matches are a great way to give a heel a win without the hero being pinned or submitted. Or, if the heel gets a pin, it’s with the help of interference. The Extreme Rules match between Bray Wyatt and John Cena featured both, as Wyatt’s henchmen Luke Harper and Erick Rowan interfered in a Steel Cage match.
Despite that, Cena proved more than capable of overcoming all that to escape the cage, only for Wyatt to win via distraction from a singing child with a demonic voice. John Cena, like Superman, is susceptible to magic.
8 Super Cena Slays The Beast With Stairs (2012)
The very next night after his embarrassing loss to The Rock at WrestleMania in 2012, John Cena suffered an attack from a returning Brock Lesnar, leading to a No DQ match in the main event of Extreme Rules. It’s a really awesome, intense match as Lesnar managed to turn Cena into a bloody mess mere seconds into the fight, and followed it up with additional physical abuse.
Despite the absolute ravaging, Cena got a sudden, unearned second wind and a surprisingly anticlimactic win by Attitude Adjusting Lesnar onto a set of stairs.
7 Super Cena Beats Three Men Without A Cage (2014)
Seemingly as karmic retribution for his 2012 win, SummerSlam 2014 saw John Cena take repeated German Suplexes from Brock Lesnar as Big Match John experienced the most one-sided, devastating loss of his career.
The ensuing weeks leading to their rematch had Cena needing to rebuild his momentum, leading to moments like the six-man tag match where Cena tags in, gets a quick tapout victory over Luke Harper, and then AAs every member of the Wyatt Family while his partners cheer him on.
6 Super Cena Is The World’s Strongest Man (2008)
On the 2/4/2008 episode of Raw, John Cena took on Mark Henry in an arm wrestling match, and got extremely close to beating Henry before Randy Orton launched a surprise attack on Cena.
Given that Mark Henry’s main thing is being nicknamed “The World’s Strongest Man” thanks to his background as an Olympic weightlifter, and Cena was already a three-time WWE Champion and a nigh-unbeatable top star, this moment made him seem needlessly overpowered. There was absolutely no need for any of this.
5 Super Cena Does Not Quit (2011)
John Cena has at least one classic “I Quit” match in his career, but the Over the Limit main event against The Miz isn’t it. It’s a classically Hogan-esque match, where Cena gets outnumbered and beaten down by the heels -- Miz and his sidekick Alex Riley in this case -- for the bulk of the match, only to Hulk Up and get the win.
On top of all that is the goofy false finish where the bad guys used a recording of Cena saying “I Quit” to try and get the win.
4 Super Cena Needs A Lot Of Finishers To Lose (2009)
The main event of No Way Out had John Cena defending the World Heavyweight Title against Chris Jericho, Kane, Rey Mysterio, Mike Knox, and Edge in the Elimination Chamber. Edge would ultimately win the title here, but the big surprise here was Cena’s early elimination in the match.
Of course, Cena being Cena, his opponents had to work overtime to take out the champ as he ate a Codebreaker, a 619, AND THEN a Spear before Edge pinned him for the three.
3 Super Cena Survives Vehicular Homicide (2008)
In the lead-up to the climactic “New York City Parking Lot Brawl” between JBL and John Cena at Great American Bash, an episode of Raw ended with the two rivals fighting in the parking garage.
The segment ended with an unconscious Cena sitting against a parked car and JBL driving another car straight into it. As the traditional show-ending copyright information appeared in the corner of the screen, JBL inspected the damage as if he killed his opponent. Of course, Cena showed up at the PPV totally fine.
2 Super Cena Beats The Nexus (2010)
The main event of SummerSlam had John Cena leading a squad of WWE babyfaces against the upstart heels, The Nexus in an elimination tag match for the fate of WWE. While the match itself is pretty exciting, it also features one of Cena’s most overpowered moments ever.
The last man standing for his team, Cena managed to overcome a DDT onto the floor to eliminate the remaining two Nexus members, totally killing the group’s momentum in their very first pay-per-view appearance.
1 Super Cena Fights The Entire Roster (2008)
In March of 2008, top babyfaces John Cena and Randy Orton were forced to wrestle a pseudo-elimination handicap tag match against the entire roster of Raw, including Umaga, JBL, Carlito, Hardcore Holly, Cody Rhodes, Jim Duggan, and and more than a dozen others.
Despite being ridiculously outnumbered Cena and Orton are massively overpowered here, taking out midcarders left and right -- sometimes with roll-ups and transitional moves -- before the heroes’ opponents have had enough of the repeated indignities and just start brawling.