John Cena admitted that there may not be a second edition of the John Cena Classic.
Cena recently told Rick Ucchino of The Takedown on SI that if the show doesn’t work, WWE won’t have to run it again next year.
Cena thanked Triple H and Nick Khan for agreeing to try the idea. He pointed to Saturday Night’s Main Event as an example of something that worked and brought up Sol Ruca, Je’Von Evans, and Oba Femi. Cena said:
“I gotta thank Paul Levesque, and I gotta thank Nick Khan for being like, ‘Yeah, man, we’ll try it.’ Saturday Night’s Main Event seemed to work. We got Sol [Ruca], we got Je’Von [Evans], and we got Oba [Femi], and those three are thriving right now. So, what do we got to lose? We’ll try it, and if it stinks, like, whatever. We don’t have to do it again next year.”
Cena noted that the Classic will not be a tournament. The show will have exhibition matches between WWE main roster stars and NXT talent, in a format very similar to Saturday Night’s Main Event.
Cena said voting will be open to members of Club WWE as soon as the main event ends, regardless of the results, and he compared it to American Idol. The men’s and women’s champions of the night will be announced coming out of the commercial break. Cena noted that WWE will need to have the technology in place to do it live.
Cena said the invitations for the rest of the NXT talent have been taped, and the wrestlers who were picked were left in tears. Those names will be revealed over the next few weeks. So far, only Cody Rhodes and Zilla Fatu have been confirmed.
The John Cena Classic will take place on December 14 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World in Florida as a special edition of Raw that will air live on Netflix. It will be the second episode of Raw that day because WWE also has a show scheduled in Perth, Australia.
Before that, Cena will be on Friday’s SmackDown in Fort Lauderdale, Raw on November 16 in Raleigh, and Survivor Series: WarGames on November 28 in Houston, where he is expected to announce more participants.
Cena admitted on May 10 that the Classic might not work, a day after he announced it at Backlash. “I’m aware that there is the risk it might be a total failure,” Cena wrote on X at the time.
Femi, one of the wrestlers named by Cena, defeated Brock Lesnar in under five minutes in the opener of Night 2 of WrestleMania 42. Evans was promoted from NXT to the main roster in January.