Ranking the top 5 WWE Championship matches in Royal Rumble history

By Divesh Merani
Modified Jan 12, 2019 15:45 IST
John Cena won his 16th world title at Royal Rumble.
John Cena won his 16th world title at Royal Rumble.

#3 AJ Styles vs John Cena (2017)

This was arguably one of Cena's last good matches
This was arguably one of Cena's last good matches

John Cena in recent times has been a frustrating figure, hardly taking things seriously and goofing around to a point where it may become damaging for certain full-time wrestlers. While this past week has been an improvement, it has been around two years since Cena made much of a positive contribution to the overall storytelling of the product.

That came at the start of 2017 when he was set to challenge AJ Styles for the WWE Championship. The then-fifteen time world champion had a lot to prove, such as winning his 16th title and to avenging his groundbreakingly clean defeat to Styles at SummerSlam.

This match was story driven, but it involved two of the best performers in the company. A motivated Cena is still one of the best there is, while AJ Styles is quite simply phenomenal. They had a match similar to the one at SummerSlam, but with the drama of the WWE title being involved as well.

It was excellent and gripped all the fans from start to finish, a real symbol of how excellent Smackdown Live was from the start of the second brand split to WrestleMania 33.

Cena won the match in dramatic fashion, hitting two consecutive Attitude Adjustments to pick up the pinfall victory and tying with Ric Flair's record of sixteen world championships. These stole the show at the Alamodome.