John Cena started his wrestling career in November 1999 with the Ultimate Pro Wrestling (UPW), where he once held the UPW Heavyweight Championship; he then signed a development contract with the then World Wrestling Federation (WWF), making his debut on the main roster in June 2002. In total he won thirteen times the WWE Championship (absolute record) and three times the World Heavyweight Championship, which makes him a sixteen-time world champion (record shared with Ric Flair); he also held the United States Championdhip five times, twice the World Tag Team Championship and twice the WWE Tag Team Championship.
He won the 2008 and 2013 editions of the Royal Rumble match, the 2006, 2010 and 2011 editions of the Elimination Chamber match and the 2012 edition of Money in the Bank. His score at WrestleMania is fifteen games: 10 wins and 5 defeats (2004 - 2020). With a total of 13 kingdoms, he is the 4th wrestler of all time and the 1st in the wwe era (2002-present) with the most overall days as a WWE Champion (1254 days). (behind Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan and Bob Backlund). Booker T appeared on After the Bell with Corey Graves and discussed working with and helping John Cena improve as a wrestler.
Booker T on John Cena
“Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Cena, every time we’ve crossed paths, he doesn’t say, ‘Hi’ [or] ‘What’s up Book?’ He just always say, ‘Shakespeare.’ And that’s our code between each other. Because I tried my best to teach John Cena the art of Shakespeare when we worked. And I made sure that I gave every ounce of knowledge I had to John. No one took that knowledge better than John Cena" - Booker T said.
"People that heard me say on commentary — and I don’t know if they thought I was digging at John or ribbing him, or whatever. I’d say, ‘Man, this guy’s got a limited skill set, but he’s a guy who’s taken that skill set and parlayed it to the greatest career in the history of the business.’ That’s not a knock or anything like that. That’s letting you know you can take very very little and make so much of it, which John Cena has done. And so many guys just don’t understand that. They just bury it, they just don’t understand it, because they haven’t been taught it. But John was, like you say, a guy that sat under the learning tree. And he made sure he soaked every ounce of that knowledge up. I wish the young guys out there can kind of look at it [similarly]. But a lot of them, you know, they give me a call from here to here, time to time.”