The GOAT debate: How does Cena stack up?

Now that his in ring career is seemingly finished can we say that John Cena is the real GOAT or just the kayfabe one they describe him as on TV? I did my best to measure him versus the others who I think have some kind of claim on that title, here’s how it turned out.

Bruno Sammartino

Bruno was the first of what has become the WWE top guy model – a babyface who holds the World Title for an extended time, beats everyone in front of him, and often main events even when he’s not champion. Bruno is the only one to have two multiyear championship reigns – his first lasting almost eight years and his second one for almost four, and he only relinquished the title because he either need a break or just couldn’t do the championship schedule anymore. To be able to draw like that for almost 12 years as World Champion may very well be enough to end the debate. But it’s not, of course.

If there’s a knock against Bruno, it’s because of things that did not exist during his era. There wasn’t a 24/7 content creation industry that thrived off of pushing negativity; Bruno’s superhero-esque character who won all the time and was a pretty basic guy who stands up for what’s right would have been pilloried for being one note and for ‘burying’ the rest of the roster. Another thing is that even though he did draw when he worked the occasional date outside of the then-WWWF, he was the champion of a company that mostly operated in the Northeast. Are those things total disqualifiers? For me, no, but they are worth bringing into the conversation.

But there are some things that didn’t exist back then which shift the debate back in his favor. There was no multimillion dollar media machine, no social media department clips to disseminate things everywhere in the world instantaneously (as bad as social media can be at spreading negativity it can also be a tremendous tool when something is hot). Bruno and his generation only had the strength of their own performances to rely on – a segment on TV to do an angle, a few minutes to do a promo, and the matches themselves. You had a few minutes every week to convince people to come see you, and if they did then you had to convince them through your performance in the ring to come back for more. And if you had a bad night or bad week of TV then there wasn’t 60 years of history to fall back on and reassure people that it was a blip and not the norm. In a lot of ways the degree of difficulty was higher and the leash was much shorter.

Lastly Bruno achieved a level of respect comparable to athletes in ‘real’ sports despite being in a ‘fake’ one. He even got a private audience with the Pope at the Vatican! Does that make Bruno the default winner? No, not at all. But much like Bill Russell if you’re going to stick to the basic things that matter the most then yes, this conversation is over. He was world champion for almost 12 years, a the biggest drawing guy in the business for 14 years, and a money drawing special attraction for another nine. And just like with Russell if you want to that say that’s enough for you and he’s the guy then I’m not gonna fight you. My Dad would have surely said that, and I definitely wasn’t gonna argue with him. But there are some others with arguments so we’re gonna hear them.

Bob Backlund

I only mention Bob here because while no one considers him for this, he is criminally overlooked in this conversation. He was WWF champion for almost six years, the second longest reign in company history, which mean he drew well enough to stay in that spot for that long, and worked under circumstances that were not that far removed from Bruno’s in regards to what mechanisms you had to sell tickets and make money. Unfortunately he has the bad timing of coming between Bruno and the next guy and so he never gets a fair look at his time on top. Basically we all know he wasn’t Bruno and he wasn’t Hogan and that ends his part in the discussion. He also was just never a big a deal as Bruno or anyone who followed him was, and when his one and only world title reign ended he was gone off the face of wrestling Earth. Bob is kind of like his NBA counterparts of the 70s who played a lot of great basketball but were in between the historic Celtics dynasty and the Magic/Bird 1980s. I guess that would make Bob Dr. J, which makes for a weird side by side visual but one that I think fits.

Hulk Hogan

Is Hogan disqualified because of all the things that came out over the last 20 years? If you consider ‘off the field’ stuff then yes, and it’s perfectly understandable if you want to leave it there. But I feel like I should at least present his on field case, which you can then toss aside if you so choose. What is that case? He wasn’t the first of his kind like Bruno and his longest title reign was third behind both Bruno and Backlund. He wasn’t the top guy as long as Bruno or Cena. So what gives? Well, while it would be too much to say that Hulk Hogan saved the wrestling business (because he did not) he was the guy at the front when it was going through a period where it either had to adapt or go the way of roller derby.

The 1980s was a time where pro wrestling’s primary form of promotion – local television – was outright eliminating their space on the schedules. Syndicated TV became all the rage and the locally or regionally produced shows such as pro wrestling where the network affiliate helped pay some of the way in return for a large, loyal local audience were rapidly being replaced by shows that were produced totally in house by their creators and sold all over the country at a lower cost. Pro wrestling was left with the choice of changing to this model or having nowhere to go, and thus the risky experiment of trying to sell a regionally flavored product to a national audience would begin. The most ruthless of those to try it was of course Vince McMahon who took a scorched earth approach to bringing his company into the modern age.

What’s this gotta do with Hogan? Well, he was the guy that Vince gambled his entire venture on. MacMahon burned every bridge that he had and would have lost everything had Hogan not been as successful as he was. With Hogan on top the WWF got onto Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show and back into the pages of Sports Illustrated. They got onto network TV with Saturday Night’s Main Event. Vince created WrestleMania in 1985 and two years later they would draw 97,173 (yes, I know) fans to WrestleMania III. None of that happens if Hogan flops, or is even just moderately successful, and everything that has followed rests on the foundation that was built during those eight years he was on top of the WWF, roughly six of which he spent as World Champion.

So why not? Well, he wasn’t champion as long as Bruno or Backlund. The other thing is that as successful as the company was during his run there was some ebb and flow, more so than his predecessors. And then there’s all the off the field stuff. Calling a guy your GOAT who you cannot celebrate without a bunch of his dirt being immediately brought up is a pretty tough call, especially since there’s plenty of things you can use to shoot the premise down anyway. So no, it’s not Hogan unless you stopped watching wrestling in 1992 and only came back for the NWO.

Stone Cold Steve Austin & The Rock

I put them together because they will forever be intertwined as the twin Suns of the Attitude Era. Together they ruled what is still arguably the hottest period in the history of the company and the one where they got the furthest reach into general public consumption and attention. And they did it when there was direct competition on TNT from Monday Nitro, and on monthly PPVs where you had to convince people to pay out $40 to $50to buy your show instead of the other guys. They used the WWE’s expanded marketing machine, which including running an ad during the Super Bowl and taking advantage of this new thing called the internet, and revived the company to surpassing it’s previous glory. The Rock would host Saturday Night Live, and both of them got so big that they have been able to live off these characters and even come back 30 years later in their 50s and do big business. So why not either of them?

The big knock is longevity. Austin and Rock only had five and four years respectively at the top, and neither of them had a long title reign as World Champion while everyone else on this list has at least one that went a year and several had multiyear reigns. I’d also throw in the ‘what if?’ of social media. We’ve seen the Rock more recently be gotten to by the 24/7 harassment and criticism that social media brings; would they have held up against people nonstop posting clips on repeat of things like bad sells of Austin’s stunners, the Rock’s sometimes clunky movement around the ring, etc.? Would constant dissection of their promos, which were great but could be recited from memory after a few weeks of watching them, take some of the shine off of them? I have no idea. They were the last guys who were able to ride off of a simple set of things to get over and reach all the way to the top of not just wrestling but pop culture, and that both works for them and against them.

If you want an athlete analogy, I’d use Barry Sanders. Barry played fewer seasons than most of his contemporaries in the GOAT running back conversation but finished with almost the same numbers and was a guy that anyone could watch in action and just say ‘yeah, he’s it.’ Watch some of the stuff from that era and listen to the control they had over those crowds on the mic and during their matches.

Roman Reigns

Reigns has the fourth longest title reign in company history (over 1,300 days) and like his predecessors was the centerpiece of launching a new era of heightened prosperity for the company. Over the last five years WWE has returned to being a real pop culture presence and has secured major media rights deals under the world that he has ruled. Even a year and a half removed from holding the Universal Title he remains the most influential figure on the roster; no active member of the roster (other than Cena in 2025) moves everything – tickets, merchandise, and viewership like he does. He is the most recognized figure outside of the wrestling bubble and has been for a few years now. And he was the main character of arguably the greatest long running story in company history, the Bloodline Saga. If you’re looking at the overall success of the company it’s hard to argue that anyone has taken it higher than him.

And what are the arguments against him? As successful as the company has been with him at the front since 2020, you can’t forget about the five years prior where he was pushed as a main event level guy but they weren’t as successful and had declining TV ratings and ticket sales. No one’s ascent to the top was met with as much resistance as Roman’s. Most of that wasn’t his fault – Vince wasn’t able to figure out the right way to use him during those years, a lot of people were souring on the company’s product as a whole, and there was some withdrawal from the absence and/or diminished presence of many beloved main event level figures. But at the end of the day he was the man at the top of the card when things were sliding before he became the man who turned it around.

Roman did have perhaps the toughest set of circumstances to run against. For one there’s his leukemia which has had him in a physically compromised position his entire career. Working over 200 matches in 2013 and 2015 is huge under any circumstance but he did it with leukemia. He also had to work while a cottage industry of engagement farmers mined anything no matter how small to tell us that the WWE sky was falling because of him, as well as false accusations of being involved in a steroid ring and faking his leukemia for sympathy (I’m sorry, they “just had questions”). Every wrestler who reaches a certain level has false rumors and backstage stories swirling around but few have had a concerted effort to bring them down that ran nonstop for five years. And even during these five good years he has had to perform for the most ADHD generation of all time with more options than ever for entertainment.

And now to the real question…..

How does Cena stack up to these guys?

A lot of this stuff is subjective. Do you consider more title reigns a bigger deal than longer ones? Is a longer run on top more important than a higher peak? Does outside the bubble reach matter at all? Is being personally successful more important than how the company is doing? I tried to make some sense of it and here’s how it shook up for me:

• vs Bruno: Bruno had less marketing help, but didn’t have to fight the IWC’s 24/7 negativity machine. He also didn’t have to travel as far in between towns. But it’s hard to argue against almost 12 years combined as champion. Whether it’s a regional territory or an international company, getting to hold the top title that long without also being the booker or the owner is an impossible feat to match. I’ll call it a push.
• vs Backlund: Yes, of course. Backlund has only thing over Cena and that is the length of his longest title reign. Cena beats him everywhere else.
• vs Hogan: I give Hogan points when it comes to the size of the task at hand: Cena had to right the ship while Hogan had to take it into uncharted waters on a must succeed voyage that had no other options than success. But Hogan didn’t have to deal with the wrestling media machine that would have made a lot of hay about his backstage machinations, and he didn’t have to work a big match every month without burning himself out. I’ll give the no to Cena.
• vs Rock and Austin: Peak vs longevity. If you want to say those things cancel each other out then I’ll give the nod to Cena for having to deal with the IWC buzzsaw criticizing his every move for over a decade.
• vs Roman: Both dealt with virtually the same circumstances swirling around them, and both had some periods where the company’s fortunes had gotten stagnant or backslidden on their watch. Cena has a few years on Roman for being in that top spot, and we have to wait a few years to see if there are kids today who will be imitating Roman on an NFL field in 10 years like some of the Eagles just did for Cena. Roman does have one thing over Cena and that is the three years plus that he held the Universal Title. But for now, slight edge to Cena.

So after all that, I have John Cena tied with Bruno Sammartino for best ever. I honestly had no idea how this would turn out, and if I were to start from scratch and do it again next week I may have a different answer.  But I don’t think it’s crazy to have him that high.  He has the length of tenure, the most title reigns, enough personal and company level success, and did it against an often hostile wrestling media environment.  As for him and Bruno the eras were different and the very products they were selling couldn’t be any more different but when you look at what each did during their respective times I call it even. (For you Dad, thanks for everything).