John Cena could have been an 18-time world champion.
The Cenation Leader revealed many secrets of his WWE retirement tour during his appearance on No Contest Wrestling podcast. Among them were the original plans for his Crown Jewel 2025 match with AJ Styles, an explanation for why he didn't retire at WrestleMania, and more.
During the talk, he also mentioned that his 17th world title victory was actually supposed to happen much earlier. John Cena recalled his SummerSlam 2021 match with Roman Reigns, and claimed that he was originally planned to beat The Tribal Chief but hand the belt back to him on the same night:
“I was going to win 17. We were going to have someone come out and restart the match and Roman was going to take it back. The way we put together the match was we were going to give him a hell of a match, everything out the door, no rules, no nothing, like tons of finishers, all this stuff because I was going to win and then Roman was going to take it back."
One Spear, That's It: John Cena
The actual turn of events saw Brock Lesnar making his surprise return to the company for the first time since WrestleMania 36, after Reigns had defeated The Cenation Leader. The Beast Incarnate went on to take out the Hollywood star with multiple German suplexes and an F5 to close the show.
John Cena revealed that the plans for Lesnar's return were not finalized until about 5PM on the day of the show:
“Then, we secure Brock. [Someone from office] comes and says, ‘I need to see you. We’re switching the finish.’ ‘To what?’ ‘Roman over. Clean.’ ‘Okay. Let me talk to Roman and Paul [Heyman].’ We go in, ‘You got the news? What do we do?’ I said, ‘One spear. That’s it. Whatever match you want to have, that’s fine. You beat me with your finish once.’"
The former face of WWE finally beat Ric Flair's record and became a 17-time world champion at WrestleMania 41. Had he broken the record at SummerSlam that year, however, it's possible that he could have had an 18th reign to close out his career.
