The E: announces The John Cena Classic, a supposed tournament that will take place from Disney World in December, complete with a specially made event championship blet
A lot to unpack here. Firstly, retiree John Cena definitely is working more than the John Cena that was on his year-long retirement tour. Between schilling for Club WWE, and answering the call whenever the E felt any need to get his name and star power into any ratings panic show, I’m pretty sure the man has already fulfilled more dates* in 2026 than he did all through his retirement tour
*hyperbolic, but the point remains how often someone keeps showing up despite being ‘retired’
Clearly, Cena was summoned again, so that there could be adequate time to reveal and promote The John Cena Classic, but it also didn’t hurt to have Cena show up right before a large contingent of E talent and personnel hop into their flying hearses and put their lives on the line in order to go to a literal war zone in Riyadh, to try and promote, plug and try and create some modicum of positive reinforcement before their highly controversial Saudi shows.
But the fact that there’s even going to be something called The John Cena Classic, seems really kind of excessive, and for a guy that always seemed to be pretty, if not excessively, grounded, very self-aggrandizing and at least to me, uncharacteristically, narcissistic. I mean, the man got a year-long retirement tour, another individualized tournament just to anoint his final opponent, and just in general the red carpet of red carpets to celebrate his career and departure.
I know it takes two to tango and much of this wasn’t exclusively his idea, but at least to me, anything post-retirement is just excessively suckling on the teat, and just kind of cringe, instead of god forbid trying to flex some creativity and come up with something new.
Furthermore, the fact that the whole format of it is going to be really clunky and convoluted, trying to double dip with two separate RAW shows on the same day, with one of them being on the literal other side of the planet in Australia, and then another episode of RAW the same day, broadcasting from of all places, fucking Disney World.
First, like could you really imagine this is the same WWE, where in the 90s where everyone was pointing to their crotches every 0.58 seconds, yelling ‘suck it’ and the word ASS was on 58% of their merch? But this same company is going to be holding a show at the Most Magical Place on Earth™ where Mickey Mouse and thousands of families and their toddlers will concurrently be at? Clearly, the E getting in bed with ESPN from a few years ago, and joining the penultimate Disney umbrella is allowing for this, but it’s just such a strange mix of bedfellows where a company obsessed with money is working with the owners of the state of Florida** to try and pad a slow week at Disney.
**my nickname for Disney because let’s be real here, they basically own the entire state
It’s funny too, because at least among the talent, there’s a ton of overlap of wrestlers and Disney fandom, and seldom does a week go by where at least one notable superstar is not sighted at the parks every weekend, since many of them base out of central Florida. Even on my honeymoon, I bumped into Kevin Owens at Magic Kingdom, while watching the Villains show.
Second, it’s like they never learned from the colossal flop of Wrestlemania 2, where the company tried to broadcast from three separate locations on the same night, airing from New York, Chicago and LA, but it was a convoluted clusterfuck where two shows were pre-taped, and the world barely had the technology to broadcast it through closed-circuit television. But that was 40 years ago, which means it’s never been attempted before, technology has advanced, and I’m sure the goons at the WWE/TKO can overcome a 10-13 hour time difference in the United States to keep their base satisfied before running a second show within the same day.
Finally, and what really spurned this whole post into fruition, let’s talk about the The John Cena Classic Championship Blet, which will be awarded to the winner of the tournament. Because it should be the aspirations of every professional wrestler to win a championship blet with another man’s name on it, that isn’t even a memorial title of some great who has passed on already, but very much a living man, basically still in the prime of his general life, who will most likely be presenting the prize to the winner of his namesake tournament.
It’s not often where I give much credit to AEW, but at least their annual tournament named after someone is of someone with a story worth telling, and whose family and estate actually has a charitable foundation in his namesake, and the Owen Hart Tournament has succeeded at helping springboard and/or reinforce notable talents. I’m not saying The John Cena Classic won’t do that, but it just feels so artificially superficial and grubs of money at TKO’s behest, where the Owen Hart Tournament more bore from Tony Khan’s mark-iness, love for the game, and a slightly more altruistic place.
Of course, because the E had it already in the can, not even ten minutes after John pulled the sheet off the title, WWEshop.com had pressed the go-live button with the official WWEshop.com replicas of The John Cena Classic blets for an affordable $799 price point, because of course they were planning on moving replicas for this piece of shit.
Not long afterward, it got me thinking about that episode of Heels, where Wild Bill Hancock was on an airplane, decided to get shitfaced, strip down completely and emerge from the airplane bathroom wearing nothing but the replica championship blet of the fictitious WWE-like entity that he was an aged top star for. It wasn’t just a parody of the infamous Plane Ride from Hell, but it was also a jab at the money-grubbing ways the E machine was operating at, with excessive merchandising and churning out crap product.
As the post image shows, a John Cena Classic Replica is basically the same blet that Wild Bill comes out wearing completely naked, his TV dong flopping around, embarrassing himself and the company he works for. The E seems to be doing this very well on its own, and the benefit is that we don’t have to see John Cena’s junk in the process.
