About a week removed from John Cena’s final wrestling match, the gravity of his permanent absence feels only outweighed by the clarity and impact of his career on WWE. Looking back at his finale, the controversial ending to his career rattled most, however a few outliers saw Cena’s vision for putting over Gunther the way he did on his way into retirement.
There’s not much else to say at this point, other than look back one last time on a career that was ripe with high points, touching moments, and markers that will perhaps never be broken. And if someone were to one day break his record 17 world championships, then as a man of his word you can bet as surely he granted infinite wishes in his professional life that he will show up to shake that person’s hand be they Randy Orton or someone we haven’t met yet.
For now let’s have a look at some of the big numbers associated with the 17-time world champion.
2,326: Over the course of his 26-year wrestling career John Cena wrestled in 2,326 matches. Debuting in 1999 he wrestled 11 matches for Ultimate Pro Wrestling from late 1999 into 2000. That year he also wrestled his first match for WWE.
1,821: The total number of wins against 447 losses he accumulated throughout his WWE career. He held an overall win percentage of 78.3%.
6: The number of matches he wrestled for NWA within OVW in 2000. He mostly worked with Rico Constantino, and notably tagged with him against Bobby Eaton and Randy Orton.
202: John Cena wrestled the most matches in his WWE career in 2011, working 202 matches throughout the year. The most matches he worked in a given month was 22 in May 2011. This was the only year, even as a full time performer, that he worked anywhere near 200 matches.
2015: Was the last year Cena worked more than 100 matches, and other than working 77 matches in 2017, he never again worked close to 100 matches.
18: During his “Last Time is Now” run, Cena worked 18 matches, which far eclipses his total of 10 matches between 2022 and 2024. The marker is also more than the 16 matches he worked in 2021, and the most he had worked since 2018 when he wrestled 28 matches.
27: The total number of championships Cena won with WWE. This includes 17 world titles, 5 U.S. titles, 1 Intercontinental title, and 4 tag team team championships. That number increases to 30 if you include his reigns as UPW and OVW Heavyweight champion, as well as his OVW tag title run.
400: It’s estimated that throughout John Cena’s career he wrestled in about 400 title matches.
17.2%: That amounts to 17.2% of John Cena’s matches being contested with a championship on the line.
1,513: During his 17 world championship reigns in WWE, consisting of the world championship and the WWE title and all its undisputed variations, Cena held the championships for a combined total of 1,514 days. If you include his UPW and OVW championships, he spent 1,624 days of his WWE career as a heavyweight champion.
131: Across his 17 reigns, Cena is estimated to have successfully defended his world championships 131 times.
7.92: Over the course of his career, Cage Match users have rated his matches with an average score of 7.92 out of 10.
8.74: Proving he can still dance with his favourite partners at a high rate despite his age, John Cena’s matches were rated as 8.74/10 throughout 2025. That’s above his career average. Further, his match rating average is heavily weighted by low averages from the advent of Cage Match in 2007 through 2015. From 2016 to 2025, Cena rated 8/10 at a minimum, with his highest user score being 8.85 in 2021. As it happens, that was also the last year prior to 2025 where he worked more than 10 matches.
3: Sticking with Cage Match’s user scores, Cena’s work with Edge/Adam Copeland, CM Punk and AJ Styles were his highest rated efforts ranging from 9.28 to 9.71/10.
9.71: Although CM Punk comes a close second, Cena’s matches with AJ Styles are his highest rated matches.
5.55: Of all his major feuds, John Cena’s matches with Chris Jericho are his lowest rated matches.
82: Although Cena had plenty of rivals, and of those arguably better matches, but his chief rival throughout his 26 year career was Randy Orton. The two locked horns 82 times, including their final match for the WWE title in 2025.
31: Between Cena and Orton, the two men have held 31 world championships throughout their careers. They have traded the WWE and world titles back and forth multiple times during their encounters.
6: John Cena main evented WrestleMania six times against HHH, Shawn Michaels, The Miz, The Rock (2) and Cody Rhodes.
2: Of those he only entered as a world champion twice; both were successful defences.
9: Overall Cena contested a world championship at WrestleMania 9 times. He holds a 7-2 record in world title matches at Mania, losing only to the Miz, and to Randy Orton in a triple threat match that also featured Triple H.
5: Of those, five saw him win the championship to begin new reigns.
10: Cena faced 10 unique opponents in his WrestleMania world title matches.
17: Overall, Cena wrestled in 17 matches at WrestleMania, sporting a record of 10-7 against 16 unique opponents.
2: The number of times he wrestled Triple H, The Rock, Big Show, The Miz and Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania.
1: The Final Year
Metrics are a wonderful footnote to contextualize something like a wrestling career, especially one that holds a strong legacy like Cena’s. They only tell part of the story though, and it’s really just raw data and trivia as cool as some of that information is.
If you look at something like his match stats for 2025, saying he worked 18 matches doesn’t mean much on its own. Eighteen is just a number. Where it becomes a little more ingrained in terms of his impact on fans, with respect to something tangible, it’s the moments both in broad strokes and the nuances of the minor details that gives it character. For example, if you take even just the five biggest shows he wrestled on this year, John Cena wrestled in front of 63,226 people at WrestleMania 41, and adding that total to SummerSlam, Survivor Series, Crown Jewel and Saturday Night’s Main for his last match, he told unique pieces of his final story in front of a minimum of 202,760 people for five of his 18 matches. Those unique sets of eyes were among the last to see him wrestle.
Here’s another example. For 2025 Cena was a mainstay on WWE Shop’s best seller list, each t-shirt being crafted for the demographic and city; each was unique. That’s without getting into the basic merchandise promoting his final year. Those are keepsakes to complement his final moments–even Saturday Night’s Main Event and his career-closing loss to Gunther. Imagine each person–even just that 200K from those five events–with one t-shirt as a memento. Its value qualitative and immeasurable.
His final year was a love letter to everything he represented. Even his final loss. All of his matches, especially against old rivals, gave us one last hurrah for the people who worked matches that maybe helped define what wrestling means to you.
We can disagree or agree on how it was executed, or how it ended, and the numbers would tell that story. But just as much, what matters is that one match with Gunther at the end had us talking all of that week. Some agreed with it, some were angered by it, but in the end the man who pledged to endlessly fight until the end found himself exhausted and being at peace enough to let it all go.
In the end…
6: The number of times Cena tapped to Gunther. This forced us to retroactively question his character arcs, his story, what his value is as a performer and what his legacy is in WWE. Those are intangibles that complete the story, where instance misses part of the plot. Regardless of your view of his last match, whether you remember his body of work or not, that one match sparked a conversation about what his legacy means. That’s a quantifiable marker of success.
