During his appearance on the most recent episode of the No Wrestling Contest with O’Shea Jackson Jr & TJ Jefferson podcast, WWE legend John Cena revealed original creative plans for SummerSlam 2021 and last year’s Crown Jewel in Australia.
At SummerSlam 2021, Cena said he supposed to win and lose his 17th World Championship. However, the finish was changed when at SummerSlam 2021, finish was changed when WWE creative booked Brock Lesnar.
“That night was supposed to go very different. In the last moment, we had a surprise guest booked and he came out after the match was over. Brock. They didn’t they didn’t secure Brock until 5:00 PM that day. 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 them a hell of a match, everything out the door, no rules, no nothing, tons of finishers, all this stuff because I was going to win and then Roman was going to take it back. So you have this hard-fought battle and then through a nefarious set of rules, match is restarted. Then we secure Brock and TR comes and said, ‘I need to see you. We’re switching the finish.’ ‘To what?’ Roman over.’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Clean.’ Yep.’ ‘Okay, what do you want to do?’ ‘Let me just talk to Roman and Paul.’ I go in, they’re like, ‘You got the news?’ I said, ‘I 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.’ I love Paul. Paul Heyman has been a great mentor. He gets it and he recognizes somebody who sees that it’s not about them, it’s about the story. This is going to make Roman better because they’re they’re having him win so he can go on to bigger and better things. And it switched right there. We’re on the west coast, so it’s like an hour before the thing. It happens to everyone. It happens from the top of the card down to the bottom. They will switch. They will cut your time. They will give you different creative. It happens all the time. So I didn’t flip out. When Travis didn’t want to do it anymore, when Rock chose to go another way. It happens. I saw Steve Austin leave. I saw him get fired. I was there when they fired him in Atlanta. It happens all the time. But I was supposed to win 17 that night.”
(Quote source: WrestlePurists)
As it pertains to last year’s Crown Jewel, Cena said that he was initially scheduled to have a match against Drew McIntyre, but creative made the decision to have him (Cena) wrestle AJ Styles because WWE wanted to give fans a ‘feel-good moment’ instead.
“AJ was supposed to be Drew but it pivoted. We wanted to give them a feel-good moment because they were listening to the data points. They listen to you guys, they do. It’s real.”
(Quote source: F4WOnline)
You can watch the full interview below: