John Cena and Rey Mysterio Make Magic When They Don't Need To

Given what happens after, there's no need to have one of WWE's best ever TV matches in this slot, but John Cena and Rey Mysterio are built different.

This is a Rey Mysterio match, but it is not Rey Mysterio’s story. This is an unfortunately common theme in Mysterio’s career following the passing of Eddie Guerrero, one in which a man who may in fact be the greatest wrestler of all time may have never won a world championship, and almost certainly not when he did. His 2006 run at the top of SmackDown was a response to a cultural event, and often feels like Rey is being tasked to fight on behalf of his fallen friend — this is, I suspect, the reason why that reign isn’t regarded as a groundbreaking affair on the order of Guerrero, Benoit, Punk, or Bryan — more than any of those, maybe, his reign was the exception that proved WWE’s every backwards rule. 

I have loved Rey Mysterio since the moment I first saw him, which was incredibly young. I’ve written before about his Halloween Havoc 1997 match against Guerrero and how, as a nine year old, he entered a pantheon of superheroes that included Bret Hart and Randy Savage, rare air that grew more crowded as I continued to watch wrestling and my tastes expanded. Like Hart and Savage, Mysterio has never been crowded out. He is, in fact, someone whose work has grown in my esteem as a consequence, and this match, taken together with the one that opens this particular episode of Raw against The Miz, may be not only his greatest single night as a wrestler, but the greatest single night anyone in WWE has ever had, including Bret Hart’s 1993 King of the Ring. 

wwe

You have to remember that the real WWE Championship was in CM Punk’s refrigerator, and that the task at hand was to mollify an uncertain WWE fanbase while setting up a Cena/Punk rematch without outright saying there would be a Cena/Punk rematch. It’s a convoluted mess that, among other things, led to Vince McMahon’s kayfabe ouster as WWE Chairman as he threatened to fire John Cena over his loss to Punk, with his power going to Triple H. Miz and Mysterio were the finalists in McMahon’s tournament to crown a new champion, and up until that Talking Smack promo against Daniel Bryan convinced a legion of engagement farmers that Miz was secretly a legendary pro wrestler, that argument was largely hung on this match — the slingshot Ligerbomb he crushes Mysterio with, if you want to be even more specific. Alberto Del Rio fails to cash in his dumb fucking briefcase, Triple H books Mysterio vs. Cena, Cena wins, Punk appears, and we’re on the road to Triple H vs. CM Punk at Night of Champions, baby. 

Watching all of this live as it happened, I can tell you two things: the outcome felt monumentally unfair to Mysterio, and that 100% did not matter because Punk was back and the drums of culture war were beating. Watching it back some 13 years later, I am, of course, amused at how terribly bungled all of this was, how straight the line from concept to profit was, and how downright gleeful the company was to fuck it all up and get the absolute least they could out of one of their most transcendent moments — even more so now given the state of wrestling in 2024. There are a trillion little things that lead us to where we are, petite dramas that play themselves out or snowball into bigger issues, course corrections taken and abandoned, wrestlers hired and fired — a lot of those dominoes began to fall in 2011, the year WWE acquiesced that John Cena might not be the guy anymore. 

So, not a Rey Mysterio story. Instead, it is a story about how CM Punk is right, philosophically speaking — that John Cena is the New York Yankees, a franchise whose bare minimum for success was a championship — anything else was failure. 2011 saw Cena’s career arc bend from underdog to ace to uncertainty, and booking him against a newly crowned Rey Mysterio is wicked good stuff — he needs his title back, but at what cost? With Punk in the shadows and Mysterio exhausted from a relentless schedule and his earlier victory, you’d think this might be the moment where the adult fans chanting “CENA SUCKS” over the voices of the children chanting “LET’S GO CENA” would push him over the edge, but instead he wrestles Rey Mysterio in a way that goes so far beyond respect that at one point, Jerry Lawler, one of the masters of the wrestling punch and its meaning, notes that Cena hasn’t even thrown one.

John Cena’s time as the moral and narrative center of WWE is at the beginning of its end, and here, thrillingly, he chooses to go out as a wrestler. The way he closes in on Mysterio for a collar and elbow tie-up that never happens is magnificent — he’s hunched over, gears turning in his head as if the burden of losing the title to Punk and the seeming unfairness of his being handed a shot are swirling around with whatever his strategy might be. Meanwhile, Mysterio, no stranger to being the smaller man in a world championship match, serves notice by popping Cena in the quad a few times. Cena smiles as he shakes one off, but despite his power, it’s Mysterio who ends up in control early, utilizing his speed and a three-dimensional understanding of how to use the ropes and turnbuckles to his advantage. When he pins Cena after an early springboard bulldog, he drapes his body diagonally across Cena’s trying to put as much of his billed 175-pounds on his frame as possible. 

Rey breaks out some dazzling offense in this match, but he does so with a technician’s precision, keeping Cena from hitting too many big shots beyond the shoves and shoulder blocks he’s able to get in around an occasional dodged attack. Mysterio’s ability to control his body is central to the match, as he wriggles out of big power moves and into counters, building momentum that either sends Cena flying or is turned into a calamitous slam — the mid-match sequence around Cena’s five moves of doom, particularly the powerbomb into the Five Knuckle Shuffle into the FU, is incredible, Mysterio figuring out how to counter much of it at least once, and in a way that’s as rough and occasionally ugly as the size disparity between the two of them should make it. Mysterio countering the STFU into an STF of his own? Incredible. Cena powering up onto one leg to break it? Incredible! Cena hoisting Mysterio up for an Attitude Adjustment and crumbling due to the work Mysterio’s put in on his leg all match?

By the time you get there, this is a strong contender for the crown of WWE’s greatest TV match. The crowd is molten, completely leaving their performative reactions for and against Cena to live in the moment, a true dream match that’s only happened twice, though here the stakes are far more weighty than the question of whether or not John Cena deserves to be on the same Survivor Series team as Matt Morgan and A Train. This is for the WWE Championship, and when you see matches like this, the weight of that crown becomes very real, not just the product of monopoly or marketing or ignorance to the world at large. In pain, Cena does what any smart wrestler would do and scrambles to the ropes so Mysterio, who just utilized a leg hold, can’t follow up, but Mysterio’s big move is the 619, which gets the same kinda “BOOM” response when it lands as Dusty Rhodes’ bionic elbow. If you’re unaware that CM Punk is coming back, it looks like Mysterio might just pull this thing out, like lightning could strike twice. But again, this is the WWE Championship, and this belt fucking matters, so if there’s any time for Cena to give up his injured leg for the sake of countering the splash that won Rey the championship earlier in the night, it’s right goddamn now. 

WWE

That move is what turns the tide, allowing Cena to string together a brutal-looking powerbomb throw, his wonky (and amazing) top rope leg drop (which was something of a death move at the time, but Mysterio kicks out). The third time Mysterio sets Cena up for the 619, you can see Cena looking over his shoulder for Rey to hit the ropes — he knows now is the time to spring the trap, and he does. In a race to the finish, Cena hits his and wins the WWE Championship for the ninth time. 

As impossible as it seems given the quality of this match, this is something of a swan song for Rey Mysterio as a main event wrestler in WWE. He ends up injured in August, his last match in 2011 a loss to Alberto Del Rio, his return delayed by a wellness policy violation and suspension. When he does come back, a week removed from this episode of Raw, it’s to an entirely changed WWE. He’s paired with Sin Cara in an attempt to salvage that experiment, and it’s that team that makes Mysterio decide it’s time for him to move on. His exit from WWE takes years due to injury and WWE’s practice of tacking injury time onto the back of a contract, which is a very cool thing that wrestling companies do because there’s never been a union in wrestling to stop the practice.

There are, of course, plenty of great matches in Rey Mysterio’s future, but few that feel as reverent to who he is and what he means to the sport, even with so much focus on Rey being on his status as a living legend. Seconds after Cena raises the championship over his head “Cult of Personality” hits for the first time, and the world is pulled into an entirely different orbit. John Cena knows what’s coming. Kevin Nash’s cell phone starts to ring. Mysterio vs. Cena is in a metaphorical death spot, happening just before the story that defines an era kicks into its second chapter. Instead of turning in something acceptable or forgettable, something that adequately serves as the bridge to the true draw looming in the immediate future, they create something timeless, bolstering each man’s claim to the title of Greatest Wrestler of All Time, wringing near-perfection from the disorder and chaos of its time.

Rating: **** & 3/4