WWE TV Megathread

[Sweet Brown Koko]

I need to see these clips! 😂

Does Jey USO even CARE anymore??  He gets demoted to team with his brother and now he shows up drunk to work?

I saw Cena take off his stuff and leave, but I didn’t see any of the other stuff.

[DMJ]

51 minutes ago, strobogo said:

To recap the retirement run:

Cena announces 6 months in advance that 2025 will be his last year. At interviews at the time, he makes it clear he will be doing a full, weekly schedule including house shows. Over 200 dates. The company says they only need him for 36.

Despite now 8 months of planning, the heel turn comes together very quickly, with Rock's idea being for Cody to turn. HHH wants Cena to turn, with the angle of a Cena/Travis Scott tag team sometime down the road. Rock washes his hands and is not involved the rest of the year. Travis Scott bails, leaving Cena's heel turn to just be a thing with no story or momentum behind it because there wasn't anything planned in advance for it.

Halfway through the year, they realize it isn't working, so he goes back to being a face the night before Summerslam with no angle other than "this isn't working, sorry". Somewhere along the line, he gets into a mini feud with R-Truth, also unplanned and there to throw a bone to fans (and talent) who were upset with the way they summarily got rid of Truth out of the blue.

About a month spent on Logan Paul.

Brock Lesnar comes back and squashes him with no angle, Brock then himself doesn't appear for two months and there's no mention of this event again.

A few weeks feud with The Judgement Day, swaps the IC title with Dom at his last PPV. Does not have even a promo the next 2 weeks for his final match.

SNME The Final Show. Cena does a normal entrance, gets dominated for most of the 15 minutes, taps out with a smile on his face. HHH leads the roster to ringside (he gets booed), stands on the apron while Cena is having his moment with Punk and Cody (he gets booed) so he can point to the video screens for the 90 second video with music they've already used for such packages and were using talking head clips from 2012 on. 

Cena then leaves without any kind of speech. On the post show, Cody rambles and cries for what seemed as long as Cena's match, Jey Uso was drunk and had to be told to get off screen, HHH continued to troll the crowd. 

 

Is there a way we can put this post in some sort of PWO Hall of Fame?

Thank you for this glorious summary. It really is incredible how badly they handled Cena's last year. It was so bad that there's actually enough blame to spread around beyond just one or two people.

HHH booked this terribly, WWE/TKO stupidly believed that Cena's final run needed additional window dressing in the form of an untrained 125-lb. hip-hop star, and Cena overthought things during the heel phase, wrestling a style that seemed to be a misguided attempt to be a "meta" heel by purposefully leaning into his worst in-ring tendencies to draw heat. He didn't need to do that. 

Switching back to babyface mode helped, but by that point, the long-term storyline potential of his run had been shot. There was zero emotional gravity to the SummerSlam match with Cody once Cena turned back face the night before so they opted instead to just do everything. Ditto for the "movez"-fest match with Logan Paul. I guess it was cool to see that Cena could still do all that stuff but it also felt hollow. 

I'll at least give him credit for spotlighting Dom, Liv, Perez, and Raquel and, last night, Gunther.

[Boss Rock]

12 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

Tanahashi was a draw, but was not a Cena-level draw, and the decision was made to make sure his final match was at the Dome. 

Perhaps neither here nor there, but I've always found both guys' drawing power pretty comparable, relative to their respective promotions of course. Both guys stopped the bleeding, but you could probably point to other folks who really turned things around (Okada for NJPW, Cody for WWE).

[El-P]

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

Yeah there's no cinema stuff here. No one liked it. There are videos of Punk and Bayley in the crowd seeing the finish and having the same reaction as fans. Punk shoots HHH a look getting in the ring as well. On the post show, while HHH is gleefully trolling fans more, Big E is sitting there like "this mf is my boss?" while the other two stooges laugh along. 

To recap the retirement run:

Cena announces 6 months in advance that 2025 will be his last year. At interviews at the time, he makes it clear he will be doing a full, weekly schedule including house shows. Over 200 dates. The company says they only need him for 36.

Despite now 8 months of planning, the heel turn comes together very quickly, with Rock's idea being for Cody to turn. HHH wants Cena to turn, with the angle of a Cena/Travis Scott tag team sometime down the road. Rock washes his hands and is not involved the rest of the year. Travis Scott bails, leaving Cena's heel turn to just be a thing with no story or momentum behind it because there wasn't anything planned in advance for it.

Halfway through the year, they realize it isn't working, so he goes back to being a face the night before Summerslam with no angle other than "this isn't working, sorry". Somewhere along the line, he gets into a mini feud with R-Truth, also unplanned and there to throw a bone to fans (and talent) who were upset with the way they summarily got rid of Truth out of the blue.

About a month spent on Logan Paul.

Brock Lesnar comes back and squashes him with no angle, Brock then himself doesn't appear for two months and there's no mention of this event again.

A few weeks feud with The Judgement Day, swaps the IC title with Dom at his last PPV. Does not have even a promo the next 2 weeks for his final match.

SNME The Final Show. Cena does a normal entrance, gets dominated for most of the 15 minutes, taps out with a smile on his face. HHH leads the roster to ringside (he gets booed), stands on the apron while Cena is having his moment with Punk and Cody (he gets booed) so he can point to the video screens for the 90 second video with music they've already used for such packages and were using talking head clips from 2012 on. 

Cena then leaves without any kind of speech. On the post show, Cody rambles and cries for what seemed as long as Cena's match, Jey Uso was drunk and had to be told to get off screen, HHH continued to troll the crowd.

Clap clap clap.

Peak PWO post there, this is glorious.

I haven't seen the clips of Cody crying (because of course !) and Jey Uso being drunk but holy shit every new thing I learn about this stuff makes it better and better.

47 minutes ago, Sweet Brown Koko said:

Does Jey USO even CARE anymore??  He gets demoted to team with his brother and now he shows up drunk to work?

I mean, it's nothing new really, Jey Uso was known for showing up drunk to drive...

And really now. John Cena's retirement post show got AEW chants, from *this era*'s WWE audience, ponder that for a second or two. The energy it probably took TK to *not troll* on social media.

 

[JRH]

6 hours ago, El-P said:

 

As far as that Cena retirement, the reports are quite funny to read indeed. The entire retirement road has been an incredible botch. Has there ever been such a terrible retirement road for such a major star (and yeah, I know the obvious answer is El Hijo del Santo, who retired exactly the same day and no one gives a flying fuck, cubsfan did a great article about that story) ? I can't think of one. I'm sure Adam Copeland is so sad by the career move he made now and that he'll retire in the company that had that Sting retirement... 

 

I dont know, I think Ric Flair's final match (I mean the tag with Andrade vs Lethal and Jarrett, not the Shawn one) was pretty bad. At least Cena was healthy here.

[Timbo Slice]

It’s obvious that via the reports out there, interviews from Cena, etc, that Cena wanted this to be a true retirement tour. He wanted to essentially work a full schedule knowing he could essentially do it and give his all, and leave it in the ring. Empty the cup, so to speak. 
 

He was then told by management that they did not want to do that, they wanted him to be a special attraction, and that the stories weren’t EXACTLY what Cena was looking to do. People in power positions (Paul, Dwayne) pulled the rug out from under him basically throughout, either because Dwayne didn’t want to do it or Paul didn’t want to do it at the expense of his guys. 
 

Both of them did that KNOWING how Cena would respond the vast majority of the time; that he would either take it in stride, work within the system, or in some cases not even raise a stink about it. 
 

The most symbolic thing about this entire run was the AJ Styles intro that was done spur of the moment at Crown Jewel. He wanted it to be a surprise, and it was authentic, touching, and unlike anything else he did this year. And it was for someone the crowd would appreciate it happening with!

Afterwards? He went back and apologized for going into business for himself to production because in his mind their input may have made it come off better than it did and “that’s not how things worked.” Cena had the instincts to make this entire retirement tour distinct and meaningful, but at the end of the day, he was beholden to the idea of the team he worked with putting both the team and him on equal footing, when there was literally several months of hard evidence where that wasn’t the case.

[Boss Rock]

I don't think he was necessarily in the shape to wrestle every night, but at the very least they could've done way more dates with him strictly doing promos.

[Ma Stump Puller]

3 hours ago, Boss Rock said:

I don't think he was necessarily in the shape to wrestle every night, but at the very least they could've done way more dates with him strictly doing promos.

Idk I think the idea of Cena doing 200+ matches would've been super painful, even if they relegated a lot of them to tags or whatever. The guy did not look physically up to it the whole year and the couple of at least enjoyable matches came down to him being with guys who could work with his significant limitations.