At last year's WrestleMania in Las Vegas, John Cena defeated Cody Rhodes—with an assist from rapper Travis Scott—to win his record-breaking 17th WWE Championship.
However, original plans called for the Leader of the Cenation to get his hands on the title long before WWE announced his year-long Retirement Tour.
Cena faced Roman Reigns during his Universal Championship reign at SummerSlam in 2021. It was a big match for the Tribal Chief, as he defeated Cena and went on to have a 1,316-day run as Undisputed WWE Universal Champion.
The future WWE Hall of Famer was informed just hours before the show that the match finish had changed. According to Cena, the idea was for him to win the title from Reigns, only for the match to be restarted, with the Head of the Table then regaining the championship. Brock Lesnar's last-minute return at the show changed everything, though.
"That night was supposed to go very differently," Cena says in the video below. "In the last moment, we had a surprise guest booked, and he came out after the match was over. Brock. They didn’t secure Brock until 5 PM that day. And you want to talk about pivoting, right? A message to anybody out there listening, thinking I’m talking from a high place, or a glass house. I was gonna win 17."
"We were gonna have someone restart the match, and Roman was gonna take it back. This is creative, and the way we put together the match was that we were gonna 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 the Roman’s gonna take it back."
"So you have this hard-fought battle, and then, through a nefarious set of rules, the match was restarted, and here we go," he continued. "Then we secure Brock, and TR comes and said, 'I need to see you. We’re switching the finish. Roman over. Yup, clean. What do you wanna do?' John Cena replies, 'Let me just talk to Roman and Paul [Heyman].'"
"I go in, and 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 wanna have, that’s fine. You beat me with your finish once.'"
"Paul Heyman has been a great mentor. He gets it, and he recognises somebody who sees that it’s not about them, it’s about the story. This is gonna make Roman better because they’re having him win, so he can go on to bigger and better things. And it switched, right there. 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," Cena concluded.
Cena later alluded to The Rock and Travis Scott disappearing from WWE after his heel turn, but explained that it's par for the course in WWE.
Ultimately, this doesn't sound like the best way for Cena to have won his 17th WWE Championship, and while his WrestleMania match with Rhodes was a tad underwhelming, it feels like the better option when compared to these SummerSlam plans.
You can hear more from Cena in the video below.