wrestling / Columns
Top 7 Random John Cena Losses
John Cena has announced his retirement tour. One has to take most retirement tours with a grain of salt, but I think Cena is actually serious when he tells us that 2025 will be his final year in pro wrestling. I believe it mostly because it seems like he has an actual acting career to move on to. Cena’s put in the time and deserves all the success in the world, so we wish him well in his future endeavors.
With Cena heading into retirement, it’s a great time to look back at some of his greatest moments, matches & rivalries. Before we do that, we might as well look back at some of the worst. Perhaps a more appropriate phrase would be random. John Cena has dropped some matches to random people over the years, and today we look at seven people you wouldn’t believe actually defeated John Cena.
7. Curtis Axel
You guys might remember this…there was a time when Ryback was a pushed wrestler in WWE. Ryback was challenging for Cena’s WWE Championship during the early summer months of 2013, and part of the build involved Ryback costing Cena matches against a young man that had just received a new name and a new manager in the form of Paul Heyman. Big things seemed to be in the future of Curtis Axel, and two straight wins over Cena, tainted as they were by Ryback’s interference, seemed like a big deal at the time.
Axel did end up holding the Intercontinental Championship, but his big singles push ended up not working out for a number of reasons. He got some big wins over the likes of Cena & Triple H, but not in a way that impressed most people, nor did he come off as particularly impressive during them. Nice enough guy, not completely terrible in the ring, but he had some impossible shoes to fill in the eyes of wrestling fans of my age.
6. Orlando Jordan
March 1st 2005, SmackDown. Orlando Jordan beat John Cena to win the US Title. @Orlandojordan @JCLayfield #WWE pic.twitter.com/EY9KcrVOa0
— WWE Today In History 🌐 (@WWE__History) March 1, 2015
WWE had some high hopes for Orlando back in the mid 2000s. After a brief run as a babyface, Joran turned heel and joined John “Bradshaw” Layfield’s Cabinet as his Chief of Staff. Jordan became JBL’s top lackey, and got rewarded for his activity when JBL helped him beat Cena to win the United States Championship. Cena had one of those cool spinner belts at the time, which was destroyed soon after Orlando’s victory. I always liked that one more than Cena’s later WWE Championship spinner, it’s a shame he didn’t bring it back for future US Championship reigns.
Jordan ended up holding the US Championship for 173 days, finally losing it to Chris Benoit at SummerSlam 2005. Benoit beat him in 25.5 seconds, which led to rematches where Benoit would beat him even quicker. You might be surprised to hear this, but Orlando Jordan didn’t get more over following that development. He was released in 2006 and didn’t do a whole lot of note in wrestling afterward. He appeared in TNA a few times and had Ultimate Warrior’s last match in Spain in 2008. However, Wikipedia does tell me that he won the All Star Wrestling Heavyweight Champion in Australia last September. Maybe the best is yet to come?
5. Lord Tensai
Lord Tensai was an interesting idea for a gimmick. A big guy wearing a cool outfit and spitting mist. Sounds fun, right? The reason it was doomed to failure? No matter how long A-Train had been gone from WWE and no matter what he had accomplished in Japan, he was still A-Train. Matt Bloom has a unique look about him, and he’d spent too much time in that gimmick in WWE for people to accept him as anything other than A-Train, or at a higher level than A-Train had achieved.
It didn’t help that he was part of a ridiculous scenario involving the next angle on our list, which killed potential fan interest in a pretty good number of people.
4. John Laurinaitis
I still can’t believe this main evented a PPV, but it was Over the Limit 2012, and 2012 was not a great time for WWE booking. Big Johnny became the top authority figure on WWE television, and somehow he got booked against Cena in a main event on a PPV. We all expected a bad match with a bad finish, and that’s exactly what we got. Can’t say we were robbed of anything there. Nothing against Big Johnny as an annoying authority figure, he could be effective at times. Unfortunately, we were served way too much of him during this time period.
I have nothing more to say about this that is either relevant or true.
3. Mr. McMahon
Vince McMahon was always going to find a way to get a win over one of his top guys. Even if it took a tremendous amount of interference and a ton of other people, Vince was always going to get over at some point. It was something he got off on once he could do it in the late 1990s. If Vince was still in charge today, he’d be looking for a way to pin Cody Rhodes on an episode of SmackDown.
That’s why he pinned John Cena on the November 17, 2013 edition of Raw. Plenty of other people helped out during this “gauntlet match”. Batista was the last guy to enter and he finished off Cena so Vince could get the cover. Just some dumb nonsense that didn’t draw that much more than anything else during this time period.
2. Kevin Federline
For those of you that read that name and had no idea who that was, Kevin Federline was a backup dancer that married Britney Spears during the mid-2000s, then spent the years after trying to undermine her. Just a worthless human being that people tried to tell me was a great wrestling heel. Even though the man had zero charisma & zero promo ability, along with zero ability to work, some still tried to tell me he was the future of the business. Some of the dumbest stuff I’ve ever seen, which is saying something considering the times we live in.
The January 1, 2007 edition of Raw saw Federline beat Cena with the help of Umaga, Johnny Nitro and everybody else available at the time. I almost rated this nonsense #1 because Federline is absolutely the worst and most useless person from a pro wrestling perspective on this list (Mr. McMahon was at least a useful terrible person), but I decided to go out on a good note instead. I will never understand why anybody thought Cena losing to Kevin Federline was a good idea, but that’s just me. Fortunately pro wrestling was past the point where lame celebrity involvement could kill a company.
1. Kenny Bolin
Like most WWE Superstars of his time, Cena honed his craft in Ohio Valley Wrestling before making it to the big stage. While in OVW, Cena went by the name “Prototype” and joined the likes of Rico Constantino, Sean O’Haire & other future Superstars as part of Bolin Services. Kenny Bolin was the main man behind BS, and managed a number of wrestlers that would later appear in WWE rings. Bolin Services was one of the things that kept OVW stories flowing while their roster would regularly change due to their status as the top developmental territory for WWE. Wrestlers would come and go from Bolin Services, but the Starmaker was always there to irritate OVW matchmaker/lead commentator Jim Cornette & the fans in Kentuckiana.
After serving as OVW Champion and one of the staples of Bolin Services, it was time for the Prototype to head north with his ruthless aggression. The OVW braintrust came up with a memorable way to write Cena out. Cena admitted he used Bolin before a title match with Nova, which was his downfall since Bolin “accidentally” cost Cena the match. Cena wanted a Loser Leaves OVW match with Bolin. Cornette was happy to make the match since he thought Bolin would be gone afterward. Little did JC know that Sean O’Haire was in Bolin’s back pocket and would ensure a Bolin win over the future 16 time World Champion. The set-up to this was pretty tremendous and I highly recommend you click on that video above my words to see how it went down. Cena did make a one-off return under a mask as Mr. P a couple of months later to annoy Bolin Services.
I know that Kenny was known as “Takedown” Bolin during his days on the La Grange High School wrestling team and he fancies himself as a bit of a shooter. That all being said, the most random person to have a pinfall victory over John Cena has to be Kenny Bolin.
Thanks for reading! Hit me up at [email protected] or on the social media with thoughts, comments or suggestions. Feel free to hit the comment section and tell us about whoever I forgot to mention. Until next time, true believers!