There’s no question that John Cena is a busy man. So busy, in fact, that he hasn’t been around WWE much at all in 2022. He popped up for one night on Raw this summer to celebrate 20 years with the company, then off he went.
Cena hasn’t wrestled a televised WWE match since SummerSlam in 2021, and it’s been more than a year since he’s even been in a dark match. As Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful recently pointed out, that’s significant.
2022 could be the first calendar year since his debut that John Cena doesn't have a match of any kind
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) September 22, 2022
Cena has gone on the record as saying he will be back in WWE sooner or later, and it won’t be as a one-off deal. A program with Austin Theory has been teased, and would make sense for WrestleMania next year, or perhaps even SummerSlam if that would fit Cena’s schedule better.
But that would still mean he’d go matchless for all of this year, so let’s fix that. Extreme Rules is already booked, and Crown Jewel has its big non-weekly attraction already in Logan Paul. Happily, there’s another premium live event coming up before the end of the year whose format lends itself perfectly to a John Cena “one night only” appearance to keep his streak of years with a WWE bout intact: Survivor Series WarGames.
The addition of two WarGames matches to the event (the first in WWE main roster) history, not only ensure that Survivor Series keeps the team-based focus that has long been part of its hook, they create the perfect entryway for a surprise entrant. Need a face to balance out a team that is one short in the men’s WarGames match against the Bloodline or The Judgment Day (spitballing the two most likely guesses)? Bam, Cena is your guy.
Better still, it works as an announcement before the event, if the priority is getting more people to tune in, or as a surprise during the show to reward people who already decided to watch. It’s just like a mystery entrant in the Royal Rumble match, just slightly less obvious.
The counterargument to this idea is also common sense: At 45 and no longer doing WWE full time, maybe Cena doesn’t want to do a match with multiple rings and all kinds of weapons inside a huge steel cage. Sounds painful.
But again, it’s a team vs. team contest. Not everyone in a WarGames match has to spend the whole thing taking insane bumps. It wouldn’t be that hard to have Cena enter last for his team and then just not be on the receiving end of the craziest stuff.
There’s also another option (h/t to the latest episode of Cheap Heat for putting this idea in my head) which is a traditional Survivor Series match. WWE hasn’t said there will be any of these this year, but it also hasn’t said there won’t be.
It’s the same concept without the cages and chaos. A team of heels is on one side. A team of faces is on the other, but a man short. Maybe throw in the time-honored “crap, someone got beaten down backstage” subplot to make it that way. It looks like the good guys are going to go at it with a disadvantage. The trumpets hit. The crowd goes nuts.
About that crowd … We haven’t even mentioned where Survivor Series is being held. The TD Garden in Boston is essentially Cena’s home arena. It almost literally couldn’t have been written up any better.
All of this is assuming that keeping his annual string of in-ring performances is important to Cena. Maybe he’s content to return when the time is right for a longer program, which wouldn’t seem to be this year — though WWE has yet to announce its December premium live event, so who knows?
If Cena does want to get back in there in 2022, though, Survivor Series WarGames is the perfect place for it. And there are likely a ton of WWE fans who would love to see it.