WWE legend and 17-time World Champion John Cena recently appeared on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast to discuss various topics, including putting together his homage match with AJ Styles.
Cena said, “When he told me that when we were planning our thing in Australia. I immediately was like, he’s not going to get a sendoff. He’s going to get one in Australia, and like you, a lot of people love AJ Styles. I love AJ Styles. We use the word love when we communicate. Like he’s a person close to my life. It’s been it’s brought the best out of me. He’s virtuous. He’s a nice guy. God, he’ll give his body for the business till he can’t go anymore. And he never wants to be a diminished version of himself. I really respect his core value of mine. It’s huge. So when he’s like, ‘I’m out in the Rumble.’ And I kind of put the math together of like, ‘Oh, my last opponent is his last opponent probably.’ Yeah, that makes sense. I know how I’d put that match together. I know how he put that match together. We got a freebie in Australia. Let’s go. And then when we started throwing ideas around, I was like, ‘Hey.’ And I started doing some homage moves, knowing that I had him. him and I’m like, ‘Dude, you do so much stuff. I want to have a match where you can do all your stuff.’ Which is why in twofold I get to pay respects to the guys I haven’t been in the ring with.”
He continued, “So, that’s pretty cool. But now my move set is up. I got to fight. I got to somehow do a magic trick to fight in his weight class. I don’t have any more moves. And it’s tough to teach a 49-year-old dog. I went through my phase where I’m trying to level my game up, but I just don’t move like that anymore. But I’m like, ‘Yo, I can this will be a full homage for me, and that’s how you can do anything you want, and we can put on this great match.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, what if I do it as a homage to like the guys I dig in TNA?’ I’m like, ‘Yo, that’s nasty.’ That’s perfect because if you think of the origin of the booking, the match was booked on social media of like fans, ‘Do you want to see this?’ Overwhelmingly, they’re like, ‘Yeah, we didn’t want to see.’ This is just fan sentiment. I’m not saying they didn’t want to see it because people showed up. ‘We didn’t want to see you with Logan. We didn’t want to see you and Brock. Could you give us a ****ing match we want?’ ‘How about me and AJ?’ ‘That’s a match we want.’ Okay, this is your match, and as your property, we will give you the best we can, and we’ll give you like a sub inside baseball of like these are two guys having their last match.”
On the psychology behind their match at Crown Jewel Perth:
“So, like, I’m so glad he was honest enough to share that with me because that helped me say, like, from a psychology standpoint, I think this could be our why. Two guys who ran parallel lives, who are now measured by what they did in the past, the first run where he came back to prove he belonged, and that whole thing of like, ‘If you weren’t here, I’d take your place, and like I’m way better than you. I’m a way better wrestler than you.’ Flash forward to like the match for the championship in the Rumble, where we never left the ring, to like, can these guys do it again? **** yeah, we can. It’s going to take a little magic dust. Well, we can. And this is how we’ll do it. And dude, like you want to talk about all the energy lining up. That crowd in Perth was bananas. I’ve never seen so many ****ing shirts. It was like they were they bought they bought our wide before we had a chance to sell it, which made it more beautiful, and they got the first time I hit like the Skull Crushing Finale, everybody got it was like, ‘Yo, this is this is going to be something interesting.’ You know, and like ****ing, they chanted for me to RKO that wasn’t we impromptu, they chanted for the 619, and I’m like, ‘Yo, I’ll drop toe hold you. See, during the match, I drop toe hold him, and I land on him, and I say, ‘Oh, please ****ing clothesline me, so I don’t have to do this movie,’ But it’s just it’s like you guys want in, it’s your match. You’re in. **** it. Call some spots, right? Like it was, it was beautiful.”
On the match representing his love and respect for Styles:
“But it was also essentially like my love and respect to him, of like I know you’re going about this a different way. I’m in this. You should have this. It’s not in the cards. Let’s do it for one night. I don’t even need the coffee, dog. I’m like you can tell I’m like pumped about it.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
