Oly Crap, Cena's been Champ HOW Long?!

[Corkscrewed]

Okay, we all know that Cena's been overbooked like crazy, and he's been champ forever. But sometimes, things don't really hit home until you see numbers.

I was just randomly wondering when, over the past two years, has John Cena NOT been champ, and I totally drew a blank after last year's Wrestlemania (turns out I totally forgot about RVD's reign and subsequent burial after getting busted for drugs).

Well, I decided to do some number crunching (since I'm a nerd).

John Cena won the WWE Championship for the first time on April 3rd, 2005. Since then, he has been champion three times, including his current reign. As of today, it has been 660 days since his first reign began. During that time, he has held the title for a whopping 541 days. The remaining 119 days of title reign have been comprised of Edge twice and Rob Van Dam once.

Lets break this down a bit:

541/660 = 81.96...%
John Cena has been champion for 82% of the past year and almost ten months.

Assuming that Cena keeps the title going into Wrestlemania, he will have been champ for 608/727 = 83.63% of the past two years. That's unbelievable! That's the equivalent of 20 out of the past 24 months.


Lets play this against the last champ people got sick and tired of: none other than Triple H.

Between September 2, 2002, when he was hand-awarded the World Championship Title by Eric Bischoff, and April 3, 2005, when Batista beat him for the same belt, Triple H held the title for 649 out of 943 days, over the span of five title reigns (I know the belt was vacant for about three weeks at the end of 2004, but since HHH was stripped of the title and won it back, we can effectively say he was champ during those three weeks anyway; we're being generous). That translates to 68.82% of under three years. WELL below Cena's current domination.

We can scrutinize even further by examining the period where EVERYONE was bitching over how HHH was holding everyone down and hogging the World Title.

Between September 2, 2002, and September 21, 2003, Triple H was champion for 272 out of 384 days, which translates to 70.83...% of the time. Still nowhere near Cena's mark.




Basically, even in HHH's most "title hogging" days, he was champ for "only" 71% of the time. Cena's streak has Trips beat by a clear 10% and is growing by the day. When you look at it that way, Cena's overbooking becomes even more ridiculously mind-boggling.

What does this tell us? Nothing we've known before. But sometimes, just looking at the numbers can bring a fresh perspective on a familiar face. Plus I thought it'd be fun to show how Cena's been even more "title hogging" than one of the most famous backstage politickers in the wrestling history.

Makes you wonder whether Cena's been playing us, because although most people are sick of Cena, no one has ever really accused him of playing backstage politics. The consensus still seems to be that he's a truly nice and honorable guy who's been horribly book. But since wrestling is a cynical business, I present to you the above evidence as food for thought.