WWE Historical Match of the Week: John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels on Raw in 2007

Outside of maybe Hulk Hogan, no superstar in WWE history gets criticized more than John Cena. 

“Oh, he can’t wrestle.” 

“Dude, all Cena has is the Five Moves of Doom.” 

“I could put on a better match than Cena.” 

Yet, when you look at the guy’s resume, it’s absolutely incredible. He has put on a ton of great matches throughout his WWE career, including that epic encounter with CM Punk at last year’s Money in the Bank pay-per-view or even his TLC Match against Edge at Unforgiven in 2006. 

It was matches like these that proved that Cena can, in fact, wrestle and actually can hang with the greats in the ring. 

But there’s one match that really sticks out in my mind as the point in time where I said, “All this hatred for Cena has to go. The dude can wrestle his tail off.” 

That match? Cena vs. Shawn Michaels on April 23, 2007 on an episode of Monday Night Raw taped in London, England. 

I know that a lot of people will instantly say that “HBK carried this match,” but—and no disrespect to those people—a wrestler doesn’t just “carry” another wrestler to a 56-minute classic. 

And that’s exactly what this was. 

In a non-title WrestleMania rematch, Cena and Michaels wrestled for nearly an hour in front of the hot UK crowd in what can only be described as a wrestling clinic. 

Just think about how difficult it is to get a crowd into a match at all, then think about how difficult it is to keep fans entertained throughout the entirety of a 20-minute match and then multiply that times three. 

Insane, huh? 

I remember watching this bout and thinking that Cena and HBK gave us everything you could ever want out of a wrestling match: technical wrestling, high spots, false finishes, etc. 

While these two gave us a great match at WrestleMania 23, they topped it with an amazing performance that took up half of an entire episode of Monday Night Raw. 

Enough can't be said about the chemistry that Cena and HBK had or how they were able to tell a story in what I assume is the longest match in Raw history.

I challenge any Cena hater to watch this match and then try to tell me, while looking in my eyes, that Cena "can't wrestle."

Note: As part of the new WWE blog, I'll be asking all of the B/R wrestling readers for questions for a new mailbag that I will post on Fridays. It will be a slideshow featuring 10-to-20 questions and answers on a wide range of topics. You can submit questions either through Formspring or Twitter, and the best ones will be answered in the B/R mailbag.