John Cena and Cody Rhodes were involved a heated rivalry last year that kicked off at Elimination Chamber and went all the way through SummerSlam. Cena was able to defeat John Cena to win the Undisputed WWE Championship on the Grandest Stage of Them All, but many people felt their WrestleMania match was underwhelming.
Earlier this week John Cena got the wrestling world talking when he reflected on his WrestleMania 41 match with Cody Rhodes and said, “I think it’s a great template for when I talk to young talent — and I try to do this all the time, I remind them to swing big and don’t be afraid to fail. A lot of them think I’m talking from a glass house of like, ‘Yeah, sure, it must be easy for you, because you, you never fail.’ And then I’ll look back, especially on that last year because the retirement tour did have a lot of eyes, and I’ll say I took a big swing at WrestleMania and we stunk up the joint. We failed. But what did I do? I got back up, we dusted ourselves off, course-corrected the ship, and we culminated with a fantastic finishing of the story, as Cody would put it, at SummerSlam.”
Last week on Monday Night Raw, John Cena officially invited Cody Rhodes to the John Cena classic, and he praised Cody for carrying the QB1 moniker better than he ever could. While talking about the moment on ESPN’s Unsportsmanlike, Cody Rhodes admitted that it got him, and he also reacted to Cena’s comments about their WrestleMania match.
“It got me. It got me. Then he said something else this week that we stunk the joint out in Vegas at WrestleMania 41, so my heart is pulled. He always, you know what I mean? I felt great, he got me. I had tears in my eyes standing there in Brooklyn with him. The next thing you know, okay, we stunk the joint out. That’s what they do, though. That’s what the great mentors do.”
With the John Cena Classic only one month away Cena is set to appear on this week’s episode of SmackDown, and next week’s episode of Raw. He is expected to announce more invitees. During this week’s episode of NXT, Cena confirmed three more invitees for the John Cena Classic and you can get more on that here.