John Cena: Where does he rank as an all time draw?

Posted by Na Lin on Sunday, May 19, 2024
I have no idea how the WWE would function without John Cena. There can onlt ever be one or two top guys at any one time, so across every generation since the dawn of time the top names look irreplaceable - I would say that John Cena looks the most replaceable of any top name since Sammartino.

If you desperately want to compile a list, I have one. It's phenomenally poor reasoning, but I base it off of live gates. Live gates are the only barometer of popularity that have remained consistent across all generations.

Basically I give each wrestler a point for every time they headline a card that pulls over 10,000 people. Hopelessly biased towards modern and east coast talent - and outright discriminatory towards those names who worked in parts of the world where you couldn't get 10,000 into an arena to watch Jesus take on Hitler... but it's about the best scale I've been able to make.

I'm going off memory - since I reformatted my computer tonight and lost all my data, but it's something like.

1) Hulk Hogan
2) Ric Flair
3) Bruno Sammartino
4) Buddy Rogers
5) Steve Austin
6) The Sheik
7) Andre The Giant (though I strongly dispute this one)
8) Lou Thesz

and then I stop caring very much, but you get names like Rock, Londos, Backlund, Rocca, Taker and Race.

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