Booker T vs. John Cena

[4.0] "While the moves showcased are good as is the selling, there just a few things that drag this bout down. They weren't given a lot of time, first, which really makes the match feel abbreviated. Second, Booker controls too much of the match. Cena gets very little offense, which is strange considering it is a short match. Cena is one of the most over guys on the entire card at this point. The crowd wanted to see more offense from him. The best of X series match rarely works well, because we all know since this is scripted that it is going to go down to the wire. That makes everything besides the finale moot, so these early matches are time wasters. Cena's win feels quite abrupt too. So while this match is fine in a void, everything combined works against it and makes it fall a bit flat. Not an unacceptable match at all, but really goes nowhere."

[2.0] "Some good evidence to support the claim that Booker T is very overrated. He's supposed to be the veteran here leading a young guy to a good match and he couldn't do it. Cena was still bare bones as far as match quality and ring skills and Booker did nothing to elevate him."

[2.0] "I don't really have much memories of this best of 5 series. I know I watched at least the tv matches.. I've always liked Booker T.. but this is a time where he makes everything look so graceful but its not that interesting when he's in control. The story here is he dominates Cena, gets overconfident and loses.. That's fine but its 6 minutes on PPV so it feels pretty underwhelming."

[4.0] "I had fond memories of Cena's US title run as a kid but these PPV matches have just kind of been forgettable. Was never much into this best of 5 series."

[4.0] "A decent match, nothing out of the ordinary. I did like the out of nowhere finish though, it worked well here."

[6.0] "More classic Cena building but to be honest its really not that bad, They have a decently fun back and forth and things end quickly. Cena is fun to watch here and Booker has decent chemistry with him. The ending is hype and watching this in retrospect, it makes you hyped to watch Cena"

[5.0] "It's alright, although I don't know why would they have the first match on the big PPV instead of the last one for the title. As a result it never really kicks into the higher gear and is just an acceptable, simple bout with Cena hitting the FU out of nowhere."

[4.0] "Not exactly a bad matchup here, but it never really feels like things are ever out of second gear as it's booked fairly evenly, Booker T does the spinaroonie for some reason and then he's randomly hit with the 'FU'. There was no real build to the finish and it's like they don't even try to hide that it's a lower stakes title match because it's the first of five matches!"

[4.0] "This was a match where Cena and Booker just went back and forth with neither man being able to get the upper hand. Cena just randomly caught Booker with an F-U and then the match ended. They ended this just as they shouldve taken it into another gear probably.**"

[4.0] "An adequate bout. Booker T wrestled circles around John Cena (kayfabe), providing an answer to every single thing that The Doctor of Thuganomics attempted to do. We got to see just how powerful the F-U was with one fell swoop, as well as how much of a threat the still inexperienced Cena was to the legendary veteran. An acceptable and adequate match."

[3.0] "Oof yeah this was boring as hell. I like both Cena and Booker, but I remember their 2004 series of matches sucking hard, and it looks like my memory wasn't wrong. Super forgettable. *1/2"

[5.0] "This was ok but I felt like it was really just getting started when suddenly it was over. Definitely needed to draw it out a bit more if they were going to hand Booker such a decisive loss right off the bat."

[3.0] "This was a slow paced, forgettable match. The pace of this match was so incredibly slow, especially for such a short one. Cena barely did much aside from throwing a couple clotheslines. This was not good *1/4"