#2 Teaching John Cena a lesson
Just three years into his WWE career, Angle was already playing the role of the grizzled veteran. So when a certain John Cena made his main roster debut on a 2002 showing of SmackDown, it was up to Angle to step up to the plate and welcome the rookie in his own novel way.
It’s common knowledge that Angle faced Cena in the latter’s first-ever televised match, but what isn’t quite so well known is that Angle was, in fact testing Cena and looking to teach the newbie a lesson.
In his AMA, Angle spoke of trying to tire Cena out to see if he could keep up with the pace, before concluding that “I tested him and he passed with flying colours!”
Watching the match back, you can see where Angle’s coming from as he shows no signs of holding anything back.
Then again, he also went on to describe the match as “twelve minutes of non-stop movement,” even though their contest officially clocked in at 5:38. So maybe we should take this one with a pinch of salt…
