John Cena appeared as a guest on the latest installment of the weekly Raw Recap podcast to chat about his final-ever WWE Raw appearance on Monday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.
During the discussion, the reigning WWE Intercontinental Champion spoke about seeing Zack Ryder back in WWE, similarities he sees between himself and Dominik Mysterio and his plans for his retirement show at WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also embedded below is a complete video archive of the discussion.
On it being his idea for WWE vs. NXT matches at Saturday Night’s Main Event: “I really wanna take my hat off to Triple H. I called him up, I said, ‘I got an idea. We gotta do two hours for the tribute show, and if you do a whole John Cena tribute, two things are gonna happen. You’re either gonna do too much or too little. You’re never gonna please everybody. I would like to propose that we have big-name WWE superstars fight in exhibition matches versus the brightest in NXT.’ So that way, we have a sold-out building. Hopefully, the world’s watching on Saturday Night’s Main Event. I get to wrestle one final time. But in doing that, everyone also gets to look at what to look forward to. I think that’s the most important thing. Yes, it’s my last match but it’s collectively. We’re all just kind of closing a chapter of an era in sports entertainment, and I want people to be able to look forward to what’s next.”
On similarities between his career and Dominik Mysterio: “I’m incredibly grateful to get in there with Dom Mysterio, who I respect and admire. He reminds me a lot of me, and he reminds me of a lot of the mistakes I’ve made. I can see all of the mistakes which are about to happen with him, and I want to shake him and be like ‘you’re going to do this’, but I want him to learn for himself. But he is authentic, he’s reliable, he works hard and is passionate about the business, he’ll learn, he’ll figure the rest out.”
On seeing Zack Ryder on WWE Raw: “I was very, very glad to see Zack Ryder come back. Matt is a personal friend of mine, I can speak candidly like that, and I’ve seen his mind grow. You wanna talk about always being curious and the quest for growth, the Zack Ryder I knew from a long time ago has accrued so much sports entertainment wisdom. It’s amazing when we have interactions, he’ll tell me about his journey and be like ‘this is what you were trying to talk about before and I wasn’t ready to understand it.’ I like rooting for people who are humble enough to admit when they’re wrong, and always want to grow, and are doing things for the greater good of the business. Matt is certainly one of those guys, his wife, Chelsea (Green), is one of those folks, who take an opportunity and get the absolute best out of it. I was really happy to see Zack Ryder back.”
(H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.)
