WWE is using John Cena as a “free agent,” meaning he can show up on Raw or SmackDown whenever the hell he wants, I guess. It’s how they’re getting the most out of him on the “Road to WrestleMania” but because he’s now shifted his attention to the blue brand, where he’s involved in the WWE championship match at the SmackDown exclusive pay-per-view Fastlane, it makes it difficult to justify the decision to use him on Raw.
Here’s what they came up with for this week:
”As the only free agent in WWE I understand the right to compete on Raw and on SmackDown is a privilege and I do not take it for granted. I see some of you scratching your head. ‘Well, why are you here on Raw? Why don’t you do this on SmackDown?’ It’s not that easy. You see, this Sunday at Fastlane there is a Six-Pack Challenge for the WWE championship and with what I have to say tonight there is no way Baron Corbin, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler, and above all else, AJ Styles, would just sit by and allow me to say what I have to say uninterrupted.”
You read that right. This man showed up to Raw for the sole purpose of cutting a promo none of the stars from SmackDown could interrupt. He had something to say that he deemed so important it could not be interfered with.
That something was:
”This Sunday at Fastlane a record that has stood for nearly 20 years in the WWE will be broken. I knew some of you wouldn’t be happy about that, it’s tough to talk about that even for myself. But sometimes the truth is brutal and this is here and staring us in the face, and it WILL happen. This Sunday at Fastlane I will win the WWE championship for the 17th time. All records are made to be broken, even the ones that we hold so very close. I will do this because this is my only road to WrestleMania. For the past few weeks I have been smothered in criticism: that I have just been handed every piece of success, that I do not earn opportunity, and the only reason I stand here is to hold people back. I was not given success, I was given a chance. With that chance, I earned opportunity when I beat AJ Styles in the middle of this ring, 1-2-3. Amidst all of the adversity and opinion I have not, am not, and never will be a man to step in this ring and hold anyone back.
”When I win on Sunday the critics will come from everywhere saying I robbed AJ Styles of a WrestleMania moment. No, no, no. AJ, I am encouraging you to make a greater WrestleMania moment. Use your rematch clause right away and on the grandest stage of them all, for the WWE championship, it will be a triple threat match: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. John Cena vs. AJ Styles at WrestleMania.”
That’s when Goldust showed up. I guess it didn’t occur to Cena that while he would avoid anyone from SmackDown interrupting his very important promo by going to Raw, there would be an entire locker room of wrestlers who could do that anyway.
That said, I applaud the attempt at creativity here. This storyline they’re running with Cena is laughably bad, completely devoid of logic and basic reasoning. But you can still get a laugh out of the fact that this man used his status as a free agent to convince Raw General Manager Kurt Angle to give him time to cut a promo he considered so important he didn’t want to risk interruption and that promo amounted to “I’m going to win the match, and also let’s wrestle again at the next PPV.”