Cena, Orton or Triple H, who was the true face of 2000s WWE

[BretHart_Core]

As the Attitude Era gave way to a new, more corporate friendly period through the 2000s, three performers essentially took turns defining the top of WWE's card, each representing a slightly different flavour of what a main event star could look like during that decade. John Cena became the promotion's most polarising and consistently pushed star of the era, a record tying multiple time world champion whose Never Give Up persona split audiences sharply between passionate young fans and older viewers craving a return to edgier storytelling, while his merchandise sales and mainstream Make A Wish appearances made him arguably the promotion's single biggest overall commercial asset.

Randy Orton built his own case as the Legend Killer, becoming one of the youngest world champions in the promotion's history at the time before settling into a long, successful run as one of the most reliably excellent in ring performers of the entire decade, a multiple time world champion whose RKO finisher became one of the most over individual moves of the era.

Triple H, meanwhile, wielded genuine backstage influence on top of his own in ring accomplishments, becoming a multiple time world champion and the central figure of the dominant Evolution faction, a run that blurred the line between on screen top star and real life behind the scenes power in a way neither Cena nor Orton's careers ever quite did during the same period.

Cena's polarising commercial dominance, Orton's consistent in ring excellence, or Triple H's genuine on and off screen power. Who actually defined that decade of WWE the most?

[Erin82]

Cena has to be it purely on sustained commercial impact. Whatever you think of his in ring style, being that consistently the single biggest merchandise seller and mainstream face of the company for that entire decade is its own kind of undeniable dominance.

[LokiDrifter]

Orton gets underrated in these conversations because he was never as polarising as Cena or as politically powerful as Triple H, but pound for pound his in ring work across that decade was arguably more consistently excellent than either of the other two.