Quality of work
From the outset, most fans would think that Flair has quality of work in the bag. Nature Boy is one of the best in-ring technicians in the history of professional wrestling having been trained by Verne Gagne.
His matches with Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk in 1989 are each considered, without hyperbole, to be the amongst, if not the, greatest matches of all-time. His feud with Dusty Rhodes is considered the industry’s most vicious.
In his heyday, Ric Flair was everything he said he was. Cena, on the other hand, has largely been panned as less than proficient in the ring. But this is a misnomer he has cast aside in the last five years as he has had several matches in that time that have been the best to be seen in WWE in quite some time.
His legendary encounter with AJ Styles at the Royal Rumble is undoubtedly the best match of his career. Where Ric Flair’s powers waned slowly and painfully over the latter two decades of his career, Cena seems to be getting better and better with each passing day, as if he were a wine and not a human being.
Unfortunately, many of those matches have come at a time when Cena wasn’t holding the WWE Championship. Fortunately for Flair, the latter years of his career bore no World Championships.
Looking solely at matches from their time as World Champion, Nature Boy struts away with this category easily as Flair’s best work is also considered some of the best ever.
