John Cena's 17 Championship Title Reigns, From Start To Finish

His time is up and the last time might have come and gone, very soon, you won't be seeing John Cena in a WWE ring anymore. At the time of writing, the "Leader of the Cenation" has entered the final third of his 2025 retirement tour, with only a handful of dates left on the road to the "WWE Saturday Night's Main Eventt" on December 13, when Cena will wrestle his final WWE match in Boston.

Cena's run has already been an eventful one. He was the runner up in the 2025 Royal Rumble match after being eliminated by Jey Uso, leading to him taking a different path to the main event of WrestleMania 41. That path led to Cena turning heel for the first time in over two decades, kicking Cody Rhodes in the groin after winning the Elimination Chamber match and aligning himself with the Rock and Travis Scott. While the storyline with the Rock and Travis Scott would fizzle out rather quickly, Cena was successful in winning the Undisputed WWE Championship at WrestleMania 41, making him a 17-time World Champion.

That 17th reign has now been and gone, and with only a few months of the former "Doctor of Thuganomics" left to go, what better time than now to go through all of Cena's WWE Championship reigns and relive one of the greatest careers in WWE history? One of the most successful WWE Superstars of all time, and a man with more WWE World Championship reigns than some superstars will ever dream of reaching. These are John Cena's 17 World Championship reigns from start to finish.

Less than three years into his WWE career, and after already being earmarked as a future WrestleMania main eventer, John Cena got the chance to show why he was the future of the company at WrestleMania 21.

After narrowly missing out on winning the Royal Rumble, Cena defeated Kurt Angle at No Way Out to earn a shot at JBL's WWE Championship, which Cena won to usher in a new era for WWE. A 280-day reign followed, with Cena getting to show his range against a variety of opponents. The "I Quit" match against JBL at Judgment Day was barbaric, he forced Chris Jericho out of the company, and kept up with the likes of Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, and Christian after being drafted to "WWE Raw." This reign only came to an end due to Edge cashing in the first-ever Money in the Bank contract at New Year's Revolution 2006, right after Cena had just gone through a grueling Elimination Chamber match.

WWE clearly didn't have much of a plan for Edge as he ended up dropping the WWE Championship back to John Cena three weeks after winning it. Their match at the 2006 Royal Rumble was the first official match of their long standing rivalry that carried on throughout the entire year, but Cena's second reign did have its own standout moments.

It featured his first-ever WrestleMania main event at WrestleMania 22 against Triple H, a match that was the first time fans openly became anti-Cena. That would be followed by an very underrated Triple Threat match against Edge and Triple H at Backlash, and for the second time in the space of a few months, Cena had the Money in the Bank contract cashed in on him, only this time it was by Rob Van Dam, who chose his match in advance. That would be their iconic main event at ECW One Night Stand where RVD won his one and only WWE Championship in front of the most hostile wrestling crowd of the last 20 years.

At Unforgiven 2006, Cena finally put his feud with Edge to bed in a memorable TLC match and won the WWE Championship for the third time. This would kick off the reign that most people associate with Cena, as it was his longest run as WWE Champion.

Across the 380 days he held WWE's top prize, Cena was routinely booed by the fans who weren't happy with him being positioned as the top guy, but no one could take away what he was doing in the ring. One of Cena's best matches, his Last Man Standing match with Umaga at the 2007 Royal Rumble, was then followed by a WrestleMania feud with Shawn Michaels that was just as good. While he did have to make the Great Khali look good over the summer, he would come into contact with Randy Orton for the first time towards the fall, but before Cena and Orton could truly get things going, Cena had to vacate the title due to injury.

Returning from injury at the 2008 Royal Rumble, Cena spent the first half of the year trying and failing to get his WWE Championship back, and when Triple H (the champion at the time) was drafted from "WWE Raw" to "WWE SmackDown," it looked as if Cena's quest had failed. However, the World Heavyweight Championship was now an option, and after Chris Jericho got the better of Shawn Michaels in their legendary feud, Cena dethroned Jericho at Survivor Series 2008 in his home state of Massachusetts.

Victories over Jericho and JBL led him to defending the title inside the Elimination Chamber at No Way Out 2009 in February, but was shockingly eliminated by Edge halfway through the match, drawing his first run with the big gold belt to a close at 84 days.

Much like 2006, Edge's run as the World Heavyweight Champion wasn't going to last long when John Cena was involved, and just over a month after leaving the Elimination Chamber with the title, Cena defeated the "Rated-R Superstar" at WrestleMania 25 in a Triple Threat match that also featured The Big Show.

Cena was now a five-time World Champion, and was probably looking forward to having a long reign that stretched through 2009, but that wasn't the case. Three weeks after WrestleMania 25, Cena and Edge would cross paths again, this time in a Last Man Standing match which Edge would go on to win. Not only did this end Cena's reign at just 21 days, but Edge became the first man to dethrone Cena for a world title twice.

With the WWE Championship returning to "WWE Raw" as part of the 2009 draft, so to did Cena's chances of reclaiming a title he hadn't held in three years. However, there was a viper in his way.

2009 saw the most memorable portion of Cena's feud with Randy Orton, a feud that WWE itself has heralded as one that rivals something like the Rock vs. Steve Austin from the Attitude Era. Orton would get the first victory of their four pay-per-view matches for the WWE Championship at SummerSlam, but in an "I Quit" match at Breaking Point in September, Cena got Orton to utter those two dreaded words and became a six-time World Champion.

A month after Breaking Point, Cena and Orton would meet at Hell in a Cell inside the demonic namesake structure. Orton would get his belt back, but it was clear that a match needed to be put together to finally decide for once who was the better man, which brought us to Bragging Rights.

An Anything Goes 60 Minute Iron Man match was booked for Bragging Rights at the end of October, and as the clock wound down, Cena got the all important fall and won the match 6-5 with just seconds to spare. With that said, the wars with Orton took their toll, and after fighting off the likes of Chris Jericho, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels, Cena was beaten at TLC in December by a hungry up-and-comer, Sheamus.

Two months after losing the title to Sheamus, Cena got the chance to reclaim the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber, with the intention of walking into WrestleMania 26 as champion. 

To the surprise of many, Cena actually did win the title from Sheamus inside the Chamber, last pinning Triple H to get the win, but the title was taken from Cena almost as soon as he got a hold of it. After the match was over, Vince McMahon revealed that if he wanted to go to WrestleMania 26, he'd also have to beat Batista, who was granted a title match for attacking Bret Hart. "The Animal" made quick work of Cena, ending his eighth reign as champion in just a couple of minutes.

Given the injustice that took place at Elimination Chamber, Cena wanted revenge, and as Batista became more unhinged, Cena got himself a match for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 26, which he won.

Now at nine world championship reigns, Cena spent the spring feuding with "The Animal." Matches that had become specialties for Cena at this point such as Last Man Standing and "I Quit" were stipulations attached to their bouts at Extreme Rules and Over The Limit, matches that caused injuries to Batista that were bad enough that he quit the company (it was really because he wasn't happy with the direction of the company). It wasn't until after he was finished with Batista that Cena lost the title at Fatal 4 Way in June 2010, with Sheamus regaining his crown in a match that also featured Randy Orton and Edge

Not many wrestlers get the chance to hold a world championship, let alone ten of them, but at WWE Extreme Rules 2011, Cena made history by becoming one of only handful of WWE stars to reach double digits when it comes to the number of World Championships they had won, defeating the Miz and John Morrison in a Steel Cage match. This was also the night where Cena announced to the live audience that Osama Bin Laden had been compromised to a permanent end, a very memorable way of starting off what would be a reign that was just as memorable.

The reason why it was so memorable is that the match were he lost the title was the iconic bout with CM Punk at the 2011 Money in the Bank pay-per-view, a match that is widely considered to be one of the best in WWE history, and one that either got people in to, or back in to wrestling as a whole. As a result of the loss, Vince McMahon promised that Cena would be fired which, of course, didn't end up happening.

While CM Punk was off keeping his WWE Championship in his fridge, the company needed a way to crown a new champion on "WWE Raw." A tournament was set up after Money in the Bank, which was won by Rey Mysterio, but John Cena managed to bag himself a match with Mysterio on the same night that he won it, and ended up beating Mysterio to win his 11th WWE World Championship.

Moments later, Punk would return with his title, setting up an Undisputed WWE Championship match at SummerSlam which Punk would ultimately win, ending Cena's reign at 20 days. However, Punk's reign would also end just moments later when Alberto Del Rio cashed in his Money in the Bank contract, meaning that Punk and Cena walked into SummerSlam with two belts between them, and left with none.

Following the conclusion of SummerSlam, Cena got a crack at potentially dethroning Del Rio before Punk. The match between Cena and Del Rio was set for Night of Champions in September, and after a hard-fought contest it was Cena who once again reigned supreme. 

With that said, Cena's 12th World Championship reign was largely uneventful as it only lasted a grand total of two weeks. He would once again cross paths with Del Rio and Punk in a Triple Threat match at Hell in a Cell on October 2, where Del Rio would actually win his title back, leading to one of Cena's longest title droughts as he wouldn't be World Champion for another 18 months.

Once CM Punk wrestled the WWE Championship away from Alberto Del Rio at Survivor Series 2011, he held on to the title for 434 days, but what was John Cena doing in that time?

He was having a once in a lifetime feud with the Rock leading into WrestleMania 28, being Brock Lesnar's first WWE opponent in eight years, and failing to recapture his beloved title. Cena even won the Money in the Bank ladder match and became the first man to cash in his contract and not win the title, but when the Rock became the man to dethrone Punk at the 2013 Royal Rumble, Cena went on to win the Rumble match itself, setting up the match with the now infamous tagline "Twice In A Lifetime."

Cena got his win back, won his 13th WWE World Championship in the main event of WrestleMania 29, and would hold the title all they way until SummerSlam where he was beaten by Daniel Bryan in one of the best SummerSlam main events in history.

Following the loss to Bryan, Cena was meant to take around six months off due to needing surgery to repair a torn triceps, but because it's John Cena and he has the recovery rate of a video game character, he was back within two months and faced Alberto Del Rio for the World Heavyweight Championship at Hell in a Cell 2013.

To the surprise of many, given he was fresh out of surgery, Cena defeated Del Rio to become a 14-time World Champion, and had his hands on the big gold belt for the first time in over four years. Cena would be the last man to have a reign with this version of the World Heavyweight Championship as the title was unified with Randy Orton's WWE Championship at TLC in December 2013, with Orton getting the better of Cena in a TLC match.

Once Orton unified the titles, the WWE World Heavyweight Champion had to carry around two belts instead of one, and despite having to deal with the Wyatt Family in early 2014, Cena wanted to be one of the people to hold both belts.

Cena would get his chance at Money in the Bank 2014 as the title, which had recently been vacated by Daniel Bryan due to an injury, was on the line in a ladder match. Clearly remembering his previous wins in ladder and TLC matches, Cena took another step towards equalling Ric Flair's record of 16 World Championships by winning number 15 in June 2014. He would hold the title for a grand total of seven weeks before being mauled to death by Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2014, a match many see as one of the most dominant title victories in WWE history.

After taking a trip to "Suplex City" thanks to Brock Lesnar, John Cena's role in WWE changed.

His schedule became a little lighter due to his acting career starting to take shape, meaning that when he did wrestle it was primarily in the midcard in order to give other people a chance at the top of the card. However, there was always that lingering question of whether he would actually win number 16 before he decided to hang up his jorts. That question was close to being answered in 2016 when he was drafted to "WWE SmackDown Live," where he was one of the top stars on the brand, and had the chance to finally get his win back over then WWE Champion AJ Styles, who had beaten him twice in the summer of 2016.

This all culminated in a match between Cena and Styles at the 2017 Royal Rumble, one of the best matches of either man's career where they managed to never leave the ring once. An absolute clinic of a match that saw Cena not only get the better of Styles for the first time, but become the WWE Champion once again, equalling Ric Flair's record of 16 world titles in the process. Now that he had equalled Flair, there was really no reason for him to keep the belt for long, and he dropped it inside the Elimination Chamber to Bray Wyatt two weeks later.

At Money in the Bank 2024, John Cena announced to the world that 2025 would be his final year as an in-ring performer, and that he would be retiring from wrestling at the end of the year. It was a decision that didn't shock many considering that he'd made it clear he didn't want to wrestle past 50 years old, and his acting career had come on leaps and bounds over the past decade. Naturally, the story of the year would be Cena trying to reach that fabled number 17 and become the most decorated WWE World Champion in history. That is exactly what he did. 

After failing to win the Royal Rumble, he won the Elimination Chamber match to earn a shot at Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41, but decided to turn heel and align himself with the Rock and Travis Scott, with the latter of the two helping him dethrone Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 to become a 17-time World Champion. Cena promised that he was going to ruin wrestling and take the Undisputed WWE Championship away from everyone because they didn't deserve it, leading ghosts of his past like Randy Orton and CM Punk to fight to try and save the title.

However, Cena's heel run was not met with a lot of praise, and is now seen as a fun experiment that didn't really go according to plan. So by the time he dropped the title to Rhodes at SummerSlam, fans actually wanted to see Cena win and potentially carry the title into the end of the year, but that was not the case. Rhodes became champion once more, and unless something miraculous happens between now and December 31, SummerSlam 2025 was the final night that John Cena had a World Championship around his waist. 

Arguably the most decorated career in WWE history, it will be a long time before someone even comes close to replicating what John Cena has done over the past 23 years.