John Cena opens up about his initial vision for the show surrounding his retirement match.
At WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13, John Cena will lace up his sneakers for the final time as he wrestles the winner of The Last Time Is Now tournament. Elsewhere, Cena confirmed that main roster stars would face talents of WWE NXT in exhibition matches in order to give the WWE Universe a taste of the future as well. While appearing on the Raw Recap, Cena further explained the motivation behind the latter idea, which he says he pitched directly to WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
“Forever, the tradition has been your last match, you go out and you’re back and you do the honors and that’s it. No, I think we can do more,” Cena said. “We can take the eyes that care about showing up to our show and expose them to the future and what’s next. I love The Time Is Now tournament, that we have some way to earn the chance to be to qualify as my last opponent. I really want to take my hats off to Triple H, I called him up, I said, ‘I got an idea. We got to do two hours for the tribute show, and if you do a whole John Cena tribute, two things are going to happen. You’re either going to do too much or too little. You’re never going to please everybody. I would like to propose that we have big name WWE Superstars fight in exhibition matches versus the brightest in NXT so that way we have a sold out building.’
Cena Aims To Close One Chapter & Open Another
“Hopefully the world’s watching on Saturday Night’s Main Event,” he continued. “I get to wrestle one final time, but in doing that, everyone also gets to look at what to look forward to. And I think that’s the most important thing. Yes, it’s that’s my last match, but collectively we’re all just kind of closing a chapter of an era in sports entertainment. I want people to be able to look forward to what’s next.”
As of now, WWE has yet to announce which NXT and main roster names will compete in the exhibition match series at SNME. NXT star Je’Von Evans took part in the Last Time Is Now tournament, suffering a first round loss to Gunther Looking ahead, Gunther will either face Carmelo Hayes or Bronson Reed in the quarter finals.
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