Big Show on putting John Cena over at WrestleMania 20

A YouTube video titled "Big Show on Putting John Cena Over at WrestleMania 20" was posted by the channel HeelFaceClips.

“[He] took a risk on me very early in my career,” Cena said at the Philadelphia Fan Expo, according to Matt Kempke’s reporting carried by Wrestling Inc. and written up by Nick Miller. “I’ll always be grateful to him for that day.”

The match took place on March 14, 2004, at Madison Square Garden. WrestleMania XX was the 20th edition of WWE’s flagship show. Cena defeated Big Show to win the WWE United States Championship, Miller reported. It was Cena’s first WrestleMania match and his first title win on the main roster.

The feud had been set at that year’s Royal Rumble, where Big Show eliminated Cena. Cena made the first entrance of WrestleMania XX and cut a rhyming promo insulting the champion, Miller wrote. Cena hit an FU that drew only a two-count, pulled out a chain, then dropped it when the referee objected. He used brass knuckles on Big Show and hit another FU for the win, the OWW account said. Cena left the ring the new United States Champion.

Cena later revisited the same finish in a social media video reported by Alex Hunt for Inside The Ropes. “Ok, here it is. Madison Square Garden, WrestleMania 20, where it all begins again,” Cena said in that clip. He described opening with “a little bit of trickery and rhyme” and showing the steel knuckles and the steel chain that would figure later. He called Big Show “as tall as 20 men and weighs as much as a bank vault” and said he did not know if he could lift him. The crowd rose for him, Cena said, “a rare occasion in the brief career of the Doctor of Thuganomics.”

In the same video, Cena walked through the closing sequence again. He said he asked the crowd if they wanted the steel chain, then used the knuckles for a knockout blow and picked Big Show up a second time. “Man, he was just fantastic,” Cena said, per Hunt. “Little tidbit about this. So no one really liked me there. Big Show did and wanted to compete with me, so I’m very grateful that he chose me as his opponent. Yes, that’s right, he chose me as his opponent for WrestleMania 20.”

Cena also told a parking story from that night. He said he was so unfamiliar with WrestleMania, New York City and Madison Square Garden that he left his car in a guest structure four blocks away. He walked those blocks with his gear bag and the United States Championship, then paid an attendant “an exorbitant amount” and drove home with a smile, according to the comments Hunt reported.