After years of success in the ring John Cena’s star began to shine so brightly it was noticed by the wider entertainment industry. This meant that as the 2010’s progressed, Cena began to make fewer WWE appearances while branching out into Hollywood.
To highlight this point, WrestleMania 37 was the first time that Cena hadn’t appeared at the WWE spectacular since debuting with the company, while he hasn’t wrestled in more than a year. Of course the 16-time World Champion isn’t the first star to make this transition, with WWE legend Dwayne Johnson currently arguably the biggest name in Hollywood, while Batista has also earned praise for a number of high-profile film roles in recent years.
John Cena “Can’t Come Back Forever”
With John Cena’s wrestling appearances becoming few and far between, it stands to reason that the matches he does have should be made to feel as special as possible. However, there are also limits to what Cena is able to do and achieve with a reduced schedule. Speaking on his podcast, Oh You Didn’t Know, Road Dogg discussed the challenges of trying to get the most out of Cena even though he can’t be around for much of the year.
The WWE veteran broke down the situation with Cena regarding his appearance at Survivor Series 2017. On that occasion he formed part of Team SmackDown to take on Raw, which were being headed up by Kurt Angle. Regarding suggestions that Cena was underutilised, Road Dogg explained that his appearance made sense in the grander scheme of things, while it’s difficult to use him more prominently.
“He can’t come back forever, you know what I mean? He’s only going to come back for a certain amount of dates, because he’s got other you know, career opportunities. So that would be great, you could bring Cena back. You put him over, you put him up for the title, he wins the title. Yeah, it’s not possible because he’s not gonna be there. I got three dates. I can show up on the go-home, I can show up on the pay-per-view, and you got one more so sprinkle it in where you can, you know what I mean? Like that’s the deals that are made.
It’s not we got Cena, let’s do whatever we want. So who beat Cena in that, was it Kurt? So Kurt, they were putting some equity in Kurt to try to make Kurt and Hunter a thing going forward to build toward that big mania match. And so it all made sense. If you don’t have all the information, of course things don’t make sense to you. You know what I mean?”
The star hasn’t wrestled since taking part in a dark match following the September 10th, 2021 episode of Friday Night SmackDown at Madison Square Garden. His last televised match came at SummerSlam 2021 where he was defeated by Roman Reigns.
The star returned to Monday Night Raw on June 27th 2022 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his WWE debut. While Cena has refused to rule out a return to the ring, it is unknown when or where he will wrestle again.
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