Patron Saints: Three Midrange John Cena Matches

There’s a new episode of The Patron Saints of Sick Sons of Bitches out, part two of two on John Cena. Following up on last week’s exploration of early career John Cena matches, this week I am justifying the promotion of my podcast by taking a look at a couple of midrange Cena matches that’ve been lost to time and a vast catalog. 

What I found is that Cena doesn’t really do “midrange” that well. His match against Sabu aside, when Cena feels that he’s playing down to someone else’s level, he really plays down to their level. This is most evident in the chairs match against Wade Barrett, but there’s also no sense of threat or urgency to his Vengeance 2007 match against four former world champions. The Sabu match, though! I went with their TV match from WWE vs. ECW Head to Head 2006 over the Vengeance Extreme Lumberjack match because Orchid and I talked about the lumberjack match on Patron Saints, and while the finish isn’t great I’m glad I did — one argument I’m happy to float out there for Cena is that he immediately, thoroughly understood how to structure a Sabu match for WWE television. It’s quick, hard-hitting, exciting stuff that effectively tells multiple stories heading into an important PPV. It’s also an Extreme Rules match that ends in a disqualification, which means it’d fit right in on the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST. So far as what I’m watching in 2026 is concerned, it rarely gets better than that.

John Cena vs. Sabu (6/7/06)

WWE vs. ECW Head to Head 2006 has been kind of memoryholed, but its conceit was as good of a short-notice PPV build as you could get, hot-swapping Rob Van Dam and Sabu into matches against the world champion they weren’t slated to face at One Night Stand 2006. With that conceit, it isn’t actually that weird that Sabu would wrestle Cena, supposing you’re able to believe that he’s on the WWE payroll in the first place, let alone that he gets a World Heavyweight Title match instead of ECW’s own The Big Show or Kurt Angle. 

The nicest thing I have to say about the presentation of this match is that I appreciate Jim Ross for showing up up to call this with a sense of gravitas. Tazz tries, god love him, but he’s also got a match against Jerry Lawler to build, so he fails. What I like about this match is that Cena works it not like a heel, because he’s not a heel, but like Sabu has something to prove to him. He’s overwhelming early on, all punches and power, smothering Bombay, Michigan’s proudest son until a signal flares in Sabu’s mind, reminding him that the match is “extreme rules,” therefore low blows are legal. The early build to the ECW relaunch and the brand’s early months were obsessed with belaboring the differences between the Tribe of the Extreme and WWE, rarely hitting the mark unless Mick Foley or Terry Funk were providing narration, so leave it to Cena and Sabu, two geniuses living in entirely different galaxies, to figure out how to show the difference so succinctly. 

Sabu’s control segment is awesome, a parade of his greatest hits performed at a high level, simultaneously putting him over as a completely unique threat in the newly reconfigured WWE universe while showing that Cena is somewhat out of his depth when things get “extreme.” Cena gets the visual win over Sabu, locking in the STFU after countering an Air Sabu into an FU, but Big Show puts his years of nWo experience to use in drawing a disqualification in a no disqualification match. The ring fills up with wrestlers who care about Brand Supremacy for whatever reason, even though there’d already been a 20-man battle royal on the card, even though there were at least 20 better ways to hype the PPV than an all-roster brawl. It’s a real shame Sabu and Cena didn’t get something unencumbered by meaningless distinctions like what roster they’re on — it’s a blast watching them work.

Rating: ***

John Cena vs. Bobby Lashley vs. Randy Orton vs. King Booker vs. Mick Foley (6/24/07)

On The Patron Saints of Sick Sons of Bitches, I bemoaned the fact that Cena didn’t wrestle Mick Foley in 2006, during his heel run. This “five pack challenge,” which also features Bobby Lashley, Randy Orton, and King Booker, is both too little — 10 minutes in an overcrowded ring — and too late, coming nearly a year after his 2006 run of incredible marquee matches. He’s an afterthought here, the literal fifth wheel, and even if he does manage to turn the clock back a bit, it’ll be for a throwaway main event on a C-tier PPV. I like how much the camera lingers on him during the introductions — he has history with Orton and is wrestling the other three men for the first time. It’d be fascinating in a world where multi-man matches lived up to the names in the ring, but alas and alack, they mostly don’t.

Ah, dang, the first big spot of the match is the Cactus clothesline to his old rival Orton, and Mick comes out of it selling his knee so that Cena and Lashley can have a staredown. I really like Lashley/Cena … but King Booker cuts it off. I don’t know whether or not I’ve seen Booker T as King Booker, but I love that he’s doing weird stuff in this guise — I’ll be charitable and say that he puts Lashley in the clinch for some muay thai knees. Lashley doesn’t fuck with those for long, putting Booker outside before hitting an absolutely insane leaping dive over the top rope and onto the floor. HOW DID THEY FUCK LASHLEY UP? 

Yeah, this match is all about the Lashley/Cena tease, and it’s good stuff, Cena running headlong into the rare man who can outpower him and getting wrecked in the process. The other three men are the chaos swelling to pump the brakes on doing anything consequential with those two. Foley and Booker is fun, Orton and Lashley is a red herring that allows Cena to take Lashley out with an FU through the announce table. Booker really acquits himself well as a new top heel on Raw in this match, so it won’t be long until he quits WWE.

God, nothing happens in this match. I mean, stuff happens, of course, most notably a homerun chairshot from Foley to Lashley, but there’s no heat, no sense of momentum or magnitude, and the only Cena/Foley stuff is a chairshot and an FU that has to rank as one of Cena’s more impressive ones if only because Foley really overclocked his run into it, and adjusting 300 pounds in transit is no small task. Tough to tell if I’m reading weird vibes into this match or if Chris Benoit’s no-show knocked everything off-kilter. I remember ordering this one for the advertised match between him and CM Punk, as well as for Mick Foley, but have absolutely zero recollection of the show in the immediate aftermath that unfolded on Monday. A bummer and a disappointment. 

Rating: **

John Cena vs. Wade Barrett (12/19/10)

Y’all have seen a barbwire match, right? You subscribe to BIG EGG, so I’m guessing you have, or that you at least can imagine its trappings, your usual ring ropes either wrapped in or replaced by barbwire. You do not want to touch that stuff. It’s sharp and will puncture your skin and make you bleed. So, in every barbwire match, there’s usually a sequence or two, sometimes entire acts, devoted to the cat and mouse game of getting a wrestler closer and closer to the wire until, finally, they make contact. It’s good, easy psychology, something that’s easy to understand and react to, something that works every time.

John Cena and Wade Barrett do not find themselves in a barbwire match at TLC 2010. This is a Chairs Match, where chairs are legal and set up around the ring. Despite the ubiquity of steel chairs and the relative safety with which they are used in a PG era WWE match, their approach to the early minutes of this contest are taken from the barbwire match playbook, Barrett going for a chair, Cena playing defense. It is as smart and stupid as it sounds, Cena trying to keep Barrett in the ring, then, when that fails, flinging chair after chair out of Barrett’s reach until he finally gets one. Barrett takes a couple of telegraphed home run swings, all of which Cena ducks, then Cena grabs one of his own. Expecting a chair-swinging lightsaber fight spot between them? You fool. You fucking child. What do you think this is, Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka? 

I usually don’t make it a point to look at Dave Meltzer’s star ratings, but I am as charmed by his granting this *** & ¾ as I was his giving Ric Flair vs. Marcus Alexander Bagwell a full four. It’s a plodding affair, padded out to 19 minutes to justify it main eventing over two different world title matches, neither of which, I guess, are as valuable as the five months of Cena’s time that this Nexus feud chewed up. I know the Nexus sold a lot of t-shirts and will someday be the axis around which hundreds of “the WWE roster was loaded in 2010” posts will spin, but Barrett is not ready for this moment, and neither he nor Cena are done any favors by the stipulation. Here’s this supposedly personal feud between a veteran and a rookie and they spend a lot of time playing WWE LEGO with the props around the ring when something more grounded and visceral — like a punch to the fucking face — would do. Like, yeah, Barrett’s chair shots sound meaty enough, but it’s hard to feel the animosity when Cena’s being so obvious in leading him in where and when to strike. 

This is a hardcore match for babies, basically, and based on the lack of “Cena Sucks” chants in the building, that’s who showed up for it. Cena works to that level, playing Bugs Bunny when he splashes water on a knocked out Barrett so he’s awake for an executive chair-assisted ride down the ramp and into the steps. He also takes the best bump of the match when Barrett drills him in the abdomen mid-flying shoulder tackle. But both men are bound and determined to have a normal wrestling match with momentum swings you could set your watch to. This makes Barrett look like an idiot, which is probably one of the worst things for a top heel to be, when he has Cena tied in the ropes and chooses to hit him in the abdomen instead of the face. I know he can’t do that in 2010 WWE, but that being the case, don’t call this spot.  

This ends up not being a great match for John Cena as a babyface, either. Cena hits his legdrop with a chair, knocking Barrett out, and instead of ending things there, takes his sweet time setting up six chairs to send Barrett through with an Attitude Adjustment. Were he quicker about it, or were the chairs set up in advance, it wouldn’t seem so bad, but Cena takes his sweet time setting things up while Michael Cole makes a passionate argument for Barrett's summary execution, CM Punk pleading for mercy. Punk’s right about this musclebound asshole, who chases Barrett out underneath the chairs hanging beside the stage. God the setup for the chair burial takes so goddamn long and involves so few chairs, why did any of this happen? A real nadir for Big Match John, which is crazy considering how bad his 2011 is before the Punk feud. Like, I know he probably felt great announcing the compromising, to a permanent end, of Osama bin Laden after winning the WWE Championship back from The Mix, but he needed the Summer of Punk as much as fish need water.

Rating: **