Jimmy Jacobs Reveals Which WWE Angle John Cena Didn’t Think Would Work

Jimmy Jacobs recently parted ways with WWE after posting a selfie of himself with The Bullet Club outside Raw while The Bullet Club invaded the parking lot. Despite the fact that he’s no longer with WWE, Jacobs seems to be pretty happy about his future in the wrestling business.

During his two and a half year run as a writer, Jacobs helped create quite a few memorable segments on WWE programming. One of the bigger angles he was involved in was the Career vs. Title Match featuring Dolph Ziggler and The Miz in 2016.

The angle went on to become a big hit with the fans, and during a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Jimmy Jacobs noted that John Cena asked him what he was working on during a SmackDown Live taping in Cleveland, Ohio. When he told Cena that he was setting up a promo that would see Dolph Ziggler put his career on the line, Cena wasn’t so sure about it.

“John Cena was always really great to me,” noted Jacobs. “John saw that I had the passion, so he’d always check in on me. He asked me what I was doing that day in Cleveland, so I told him. He gave me a, ‘Well, we’ll see how that goes.’”

“He was really skeptical, basically saying, ‘I don’t think that’s going to work,’” said Jacobs. “And I’m not knocking John Cena. John was the man. I f—— love John Cena. But with the way I had it laid out, we weren’t leaving on boos directed at the Miz or Dolph ending by saying, ‘I’m going to kick your ass!’ We were leaving on the gravity of Dolph putting his career on the line. John said to me, ‘We’re in a yay-boo business. You’ve got to leave them with either cheering Dolph Ziggler or booing The Miz.’ So I said, ‘Well, we’re up in four minutes, so we’ll see.’”

Even though John Cena didn’t think the promo would work, he did change his mind after seeing it.

“John watched from ‘Gorilla’,” said Jacobs. “Afterwards, he said, ‘I was skeptical of that, but that was a homerun. I really felt that.’ I was really proud of that.”

Dolph Ziggler went on to face The Miz and defeat him in a match that some fans at the time argued should have main evented No Mercy in 2016. Regardless of where the match ended up on the card, there’s no denying that the story worked, and the angle was definitely a high point for Dolph Ziggler’s career in 2016.