John Cena officially announced that John Cena Classic months ago at Backlash and since then there’s been a lot of speculation regarding how the tournament is going to go. Last week on Raw, Cena confirmed that the John Cena Classic will emanate from the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex on December 14th, and now he’s revealed a few new details.
While talking about the plans for the John Cena Classic while speaking with The Takedown on SI, John Cena noted that the tournament will be kind of like American Idol as far as the voting is concerned. He also reiterated that the show will feature main roster stars vs. NXT stars, and he revealed that the tournament will not feature a bracket.
“This is where I see, hopefully, my future in WWE lying, as a beacon of opportunity. I wanna try to create [something like] an Arnold Classic. I took a lot from the Arnold Classic. I took a lot from fan appreciation nights. I took a lot from All-Star games, but I wanna create that situation where fans can come to an event they know every year, they know what the situation is, and we’re in the pilot.”
“They’re all gonna be current [main roster stars] versus NXT. It’s very much like Saturday Night’s Main Event, and I love that December 14th is the date, because that’s one year and one day from my last match. And as soon as I retired, on the way home, I was thinking about how I can [stay] involved.”
“Hopefully, if we have the technological acumen to do this, as soon as the last match is over, it’s kinda like American Idol… voting’s open now to Club WWE members. And when we come back from commercial break, we’re gonna award the women’s champion of the night, and we’re gonna award the men’s champion of the night.”
As of this writing Cody Rhodes and Zilla Fatu are the only two competitors confirmed for the John Cena Classic, but more names are expected to be revealed in the coming weeks.