On the surface, the final match between John Cena and AJ Styles seems to have come about after the former gauged interest from fans online. According to a new report, however, internal plans for this WWE Crown Jewel match have been in place for a while.
“This (John Cena vs. AJ Styles) match was always scheduled for Australia. Always,” said Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio. “So the whole deal about Cena and AJ, with Cena doing the tribute to him because he wasn’t gonna get to wrestle him, that was actually to build to this match; that was not actually ever the case.
“The idea was they’d tell people ‘you’re not going to get this match’ — so to create a demand for the match, they basically told the story that Cena is paying tribute to him because he’s only got limited dates, and AJ ain’t getting it. Then AJ did that dark speech on RAW during the American commercials about how ‘I’m mad at how I’m being booked’ and whatever. It was all to build up this match.” (H/T to WrestlePurists for the transcription).
At WWE Clash in Paris, Cena paid homage to Styles by using his Styles Clash finishing move on Logan Paul. Afterward, Cena noted that he wouldn’t be able to wrestle everyone in his retirement tour, but he still wanted to honor them by using some of their moves.
With that in mind, many fans were under the impression that Cena and Styles would never wrestle each other again. WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque later confirmed that to not be the case when he announced that Cena vs. Styles would happen one more time at WWE Crown Jewel in Perth, Australia on October 11.
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