A lot of WWE fans were expecting to see John Cena make an appearance at Wrestlemania 37 last month, but since he was filming the upcoming HBO Max series Peacemaker at the time, the 16-time WWE world champion didn’t make it to the event. Cena, however, has always been vocal about his desire to return to WWE, and while the company has yet to officially announce an exact date for his comeback, a new report suggests that the wrestling superstar may show up in the July 16th episode of Friday Night SmackDown.
According to F4Wonline, WWE is in negotiations to bring back Cena for the said SmackDown episode, which will be WWE’s first-ever show back with fans since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Kicking off WWE’s return to live touring, the SmackDown episode will take place at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported last Sunday that Peacemaker, which is a spinoff of the 2021 film The Suicide Squad, is set to wrap its production on July 6th. So if Cena doesn’t have any prior commitment after that, it’s likely that he will be appearing in the said SmackDown episode in the event WWE goes forward with that plan.
Cena last competed in the WWE ring at WrestleMania 36, where he lost the Firefly Fun House cinematic match against Bray Wyatt after being forced to relive his greatest career failures. And when he returns to the WWE ring, Cena said that his main goal is to continue contributing to the narrative instead of trying to claim the top spot.
“I don’t think it’s about topping what you’ve done. I think it’s about correctly continuing a narrative,” Cena said in an interview with Den of Geek earlier this month of what he wants to do in his WWE return. “And I think that’s the most important thing. I mean, I main evented two WrestleMania’s with The Rock and then the very next WrestleMania I was in the middle of the card against the newcomer, and then I would move further shifting through the card against other veritable newcomers for tertiary titles or up to the point of being a fan at one point. But that was my contribution to the narrative. It wasn’t like I was jumping up and down saying, ‘I was the main event, so I need to continue being a main event.’”
“I really, really want to get back to WWE… I do look forward to returning,” Cena continued. “[But] it won’t be about topping a Firefly Funhouse match. The first question I’ll ask is ‘Why?’ And the next question I’ll ask is ‘Where do we go after that?’ And if I get, ‘I don’t know’ to both of them, that’s cool because that means I can come up with my own thing.”
Written and directed by James Gunn, Peacemaker is set to premiere on HBO Max in January 22nd, 2022.