John Cena reveals who was originally going to be his opponent at WWE Crown Jewel 2025
While appearing on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast, John Cena reflected on his retirement run with WWE in 2025. He noted that AJ Styles wasn’t originally going to be his opponent at WWE Crown Jewel 2025…
“In the whole story arc, I tried to plan it as a year of creative experiences. But you’ve also got to be able to pivot.
Hey, you’ve got Travis [Scott] and Rock. You don’t have Rock. You don’t have Travis. We’re going to do this. AJ was supposed to be Drew [McIntyre]. But it pivoted.
We want to give them a feel-good moment because we’re listening to the data points. They listen to you guys. They do. It’s real. But if we tell you, then you’ll say something else, and it might not be authentic.
So you have the Brock [Lesnar] moment — people are pissed off. Then you have the AJ moment — things are great. And then you have this three-appearance run with Dom [Mysterio], which is fun.
Hometown boy wins in his hometown, gets the hits for the cycle. You can’t write it better than that. Then you go to San Diego, he gets his payback, but Liv [Morgan] comes back. We involve every person we possibly can.
And then the Ring General [Gunther]. Here’s what I want to say about that, too: the show doesn’t stop when I’m done. I’m the first character who’s been killed off. That’s what was hard. People were like, ‘What the f*ck?’ No — my character was killed off. No one ever gets killed off because no one ever closes the door. They’re always hanging around. The carnival worker is always hanging around for that one last payout.”