John Cena talks one of the more interesting matchups from his WWE career.
The former 16-time world champion spoke about the Firefly Funhouse showdown with Bray Wyatt from WrestleMania 36, a matchup that was filmed cinematically due to the restrictions from COVID-19. Cena reflected on the matchup during an interview with Chris Van Vilet, and said that it was originally just going to b a singles-showdown, but that it developed into something even better.
[Was it going to be a normal match?] Yeah, and then things happened. And I remember three days before we filmed the Firefly Funhouse match. It was the last TV taping where they came in and they’re like, you’re gonna have a Firefly Funhouse match. And I remember there was three people in one of the conference rooms in NXT with me, I said, What’s a Firefly Funhouse match? They said, I don’t know. I said great! What can we do? And that was like, oh, man, again control the controllable. I wish we had an audience. Performers are like I wish there could be blood. I wish we could do chair shots to the head. I wish we could swear I wish I could flip people off. Control the controllable, use the tools in your tool belt. How do we make something entertaining over a two day period with no audience? And they gave us a stipulation. Everybody else has a regular match. And it’s your stip like it’s your stip. It’s not a doctor of Thuganomics match or hustle, loyalty, respect match, that’s completely different. You have these definitive characters, you have all this ammunition, you have all this personality. And that’s what people really radiate towards. Holy sh*t we can make this a meta look at my life and we can get away with it. What do we have up in the warehouse, we have the fist, we have the blue cage. I can get some nWo stuff, we can make this work. And I remember this the only match I’ve ever written from start to finish. And my poor wife, I made her print it out and I’m writing and giving her paper. [She said] What is this? What does it even mean? I said just print it, I need it. And somewhere I still have the original draft in my handwriting of the Firefly Funhouse. But man Bray couldn’t have been better. He knew what was up. And he knew the whole thing. I wrote it the night before. So I’m trying to text these guys like I got something weird and I think I might have sent a picture of the draft. And I still do in my phone. I don’t have it with me. But I have saved a text that I sent him the night of the match, especially after we saw The Undertaker’s match the night before, and there was a whole lot more physicality, we got one punch. And I text him how nervous I was. But I wanted to thank him for being so brave and trusting me and I think I couldn’t have done any more. And I think we gave it our best shot. And hopefully it works. And it was an effort that I am very proud of
Elsewhere in the interview, Cena revealed the scrapped plans for him to turn heel during his first feud with The Rock. You can read about that here.
