John Cena and the 5 Best Possible Opponents for Samoa Joe at WWE WrestleMania 35

Last week on SmackDown Live, Samoa Joe reigned supreme in a Fatal 4-Way match to capture the United States Championship, giving him his first taste of WWE gold since arriving on the main roster two years ago.

Perhaps the best part about his title win is that it now all but guarantees he will finally make his WrestleMania debut this year.

The Samoan Submission Specialist was forced to sit on the sidelines for the past two years at 'Mania due to injury and WWE Creative simply not having anything for him, but that (hopefully) won't be the case come April 7 in Newark, New Jersey.

In recent years, the United States Championship hasn't meant nearly as much as it once did. WWE playing hot potato with the title hasn't helped matters, either, but the belt should have a permanent home over Joe's shoulder for the foreseeable future.

With SmackDown having such a stacked roster at the moment, there are a handful of potential opponents to choose from for Joe at WrestleMania. If he's the fighting champion he claims to be, he should have no problem finding a worthy challenger to his championship at The Show of Shows.

The strap could well end up being defended in a multi-man match of some sort, but a one-on-one outing is the way to go for the titleholder.

The following five Superstars would make for the most compelling contenders to the title right now and ensure it is featured prominently on the WrestleMania 35 card.

Let's start off with the obvious choice, even if Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio has since reported it may not be in the cards for WrestleMania 35 after all.

John Cena vs. Samoa Joe had been viewed as a dream match by many long before The Samoan Submission Machine arrived in WWE. They came up in the business together but embarked on different paths, one leading Cena to WWE and the other taking Joe to Ring of Honor and Impact Wrestling.

They have largely been kept apart for the past two years, though Joe teased feuding with Cena at one time in early 2018. Unfortunately, the storyline had to be scrapped as a result of Joe getting hurt and having to miss WrestleMania, but there's no reason they can't revisit that rivalry this year.

After all, it would be perfectly logical for Cena to want to reclaim the championship he helped make prestigious years ago. Not only that, R-Truth brought up The Cenation Leader at every turn for weeks on end before he dropped the U.S. title to Samoa Joe on the March 5 edition of SmackDown Live.

All it would take to set this match up for 'Mania would be Joe beating Truth down and Cena making the save. There's plenty more history between them that could be explored going into the event, but that would be the general gist of how it could come together.

Similar to John Cena, it's amazing to think Samoa Joe and Rey Mysterio have both been in the business for over two decades and have never clashed in singles competition before in any organization, including WWE.

It can be argued they're in the twilight of their respective careers, but that hasn't stopped them from giving their all in every match they're a part of. Despite his less-than-stellar win-loss record, Joe has been killing it since signing with WWE, while Mysterio has experienced a career resurgence of sorts in recent years.

Although they have yet to go one-on-one, they have done battle in various multi-man matches for the United States Championship on SmackDown Live lately. In fact, Joe pinned Mysterio in a Fatal 4-Way at Fastlane on Sunday to retain his title.

Mysterio may be busy with Andrade at the moment, but if they don't face off at WrestleMania, he would be an ideal challenger for Joe.

The Master of the 619 actually pinned the former NXT champion during a tag team match this week on SmackDown, so it's possible WWE could be setting up a championship clash between them either before or at WrestleMania.

As a former multi-time WWE world champion, Mysterio lends a lot of credibility to the star-spangled prize simply by competing for it.

Of course, it isn't imperative he beats Joe for the belt, but it should be noted it's the one title that has always alluded him, so an eventual run with it would be a nice feather in his cap.

Needless to say, EC3 is the biggest dark horse to vie for the United States Championship of everyone featured on this list, but stranger things have happened.

His main roster run can't be considered anything but a failure so far. He was called up from NXT along with several other stars earlier this year, only to find out WWE Creative had nothing for him.

EC3 went from feuding with the Undisputed Era and facing Velveteen Dream at NXT TakeOver to being booked to look like a comedy character on Raw and SmackDown Live.

Not counting Main Event, he has only wrestled two matches on the main roster up to this point, splitting wins with Dean Ambrose.

There is no denying he has been handled horribly by WWE, but there is still time for him to bounce back. As of this writing, the company has yet to officially assign him to one brand, but he'd be a fine fit on SmackDown and in the United States Championship picture.

Aside from a one-off outing in Impact Wrestling in January 2014, EC3 and Joe haven't worked with each other much.

While the kind of chemistry they'd have is unknown, Joe could help establish EC3 as a star on the rise by bringing the best out of him on The Grandest Stage of Them All, regardless of the result.

Interestingly enough, Samoa Joe and Kevin Owens have crossed paths at various points throughout their WWE careers, but the time was never right for them to engage in a full-fledged feud.

They first faced off at NXT TakeOver: Unstoppable when Joe debuted and set his sights on Owens' NXT Championship. Nothing ever came of the confrontation, though they did form a temporary alliance on the road to WrestleMania 33 before going their separate ways in the 2017 Superstar Shake-up.

It never made sense for them to have a rivalry with each other because both have always been heels on the main roster. That was, however, until Owens turned face upon his return to the ring just a few weeks ago and jumped ship from Raw to SmackDown Live.

Owens recently failed to win the WWE Championship at Fastlane, so what WWE has in store for him for the remainder of the Road to WrestleMania is uncertain. He lost again to Bryan in tag team action on the subsequent SmackDown, so it would seem the only other title he could vie for on April 7 would be the United States Championship.

The Prizefighter held the star-spangled prize on three different occasions in 2017 and did his best to elevate it to heights that hadn't been reached since John Cena was in possession of it.

Joe vs. Owens with the gold up for grabs would be a fight worthy of the WrestleMania stage.

From Jeff Hardy to AJ Styles, Samoa Joe has made enemies out of almost everyone on the SmackDown Live roster at one point or another. He added Mustafa Ali to his list of targets earlier this year before the Royal Rumble, and the two instantly created magic together.

It was such a simple story of the underdog attempting to overcome the odds by waging war with SmackDown's most destructive and dominant force.

Their first match never came to pass thanks to Joe ambushing Ali beforehand, and when they finally did go one-on-one, The Samoan Submission Specialist had his hand raised after putting his opponent to sleep in the Coquina Clutch.

Ali scored a measure of revenge by eliminating Joe from the Royal Rumble match in shocking fashion, but the two were never able to finish their feud due to the former 205 Live star suffering an injury that kept him out of action for a month.

Like Kevin Owens, he fell short of beating Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship at Fastlane and appears to be directionless on the Road to WrestleMania.

A brief program with Rowan (who was blamed in the storyline for injuring Ali) is always an option, but rekindling his rivalry with Joe over the United States Championship would be infinitely more exciting.

It would be even cooler to see Ali be the one to take the title from Joe at WrestleMania, one year removed from when he lost in the finals of the Cruiserweight Championship tournament on the kickoff show.

Joe and Ali still have unfinished business from months ago that should be settled eventually, and if none of the other proposed 'Mania matches become a reality, they would be a solid choice to open the pay-per-view. The only issue then is the bar being set high enough to the point where no one else can top them.

Graham Mirmina, aka Graham "GSM" Matthews, is an Endicott College alumnus and aspiring journalist. Visit his website, Next Era Wrestling, and "like" his official Facebook page to continue the conversation on all things wrestling.