Ever since assuming the role of The Tribal Chief back in 2020, Roman Reigns has dominated the WWE’s landscape for 3 years straight. He has been at the top of the company and established himself as one of the greatest superstars in pro wrestling, a sentiment that WWE legend John Cena seems to agree with.
John Cena and Roman Reigns do have a lot of history together. They faced off against each other once in 2017 and another time in 2021. On both of these occasions, The Cenation Leader was defeated by The Head of the Table and has since praised Reigns for his contributions and his hard work in the ring.
John Cena labels Roman Reigns as the “greatest of all time”
During their first encounter in 2017, when Roman Reigns wasn’t yet accepted by the fans as the face of the company, John Cena famously buried the former during their verbal exchange. Six years later, it looks like The Cenation Leader has come to finally acknowledge The Tribal Chief and has recently labeled him as the “Greatest of All Time”.
John Cena still stands on his opinion of Roman Reigns being the greatest of all time.
— Wrestle Ops (@WrestleOps) November 3, 2023
Source — WWE’s ATB podcast pic.twitter.com/C4p8w9ob0I
Appearing on WWE’s After The Bell, Cena said a lot of positive things about Reigns, even going so far as to call him the greatest wrestler in sports entertainment. He said the following in the podcast:
“He’s a sponge, and he’s athletic, super intelligent, and a fan of this, and I mean all of this. Most importantly, a fan of psychology. I say the WWE Universe is the biggest superstar we have. Roman navigated those waters without them. Here’s the thing with Roman, I don’t think Roman is Roman if he doesn’t have a time to work in front of no crowd”.
“The crowd is so against the fact that the company believed in Roman Reigns…I set the precedent of ‘Company guy, see ya.’ Everyone has a tough hill to climb once they become pushed. There is a giant ray behind the curtain, we all know that too. ‘We have to be careful how this happens because we don’t want this to happen.’”
John Cena further continued, “That absolutely happened with Roman. It was when the crowd wasn’t there that you’re able to take more chances, that Roman could be himself. There wasn’t anyone to be like, ‘That sucked, that didn’t work,’ because you don’t have the instant feedback. Night after night, it becomes this extremely nuanced soft-spoken character that is not the ‘welcome to SmackDown!’ that they’re used to. As soon as they bring people back in, he had done such a riveting program, that it was, ‘Man, I want to see this guy.’ He has done it better than anybody I have ever seen. He’s the Greatest of All Time, in my opinion.”
Cena faces Solo Sikoa at WWE Crown Jewel
The Shawn Michaels of this generation John Cena had his last singles match at WrestleMania 39 against Austin Theory, a match which The Cenation Leader lost. He is now set to have his second singles match this year against Solo Sikoa at the upcoming Crown Jewel event.
Solo Sikoa has been protected by WWE so far as a singles competitor and has not been pinned many times. It looks like WWE might be trying to protect him from being pinned clean against Cena, as it was reported by Dave Meltzer that Cena’s match against Sikoa might not be a clean finish and result in either a no DQ or the Bloodline member losing after a distraction.
It’s unclear as of now if WWE will make the decision of putting Solo Sikoa over by having John Cena lose clean. This is Cena’s last appearance at a PLE for this year and it looks like he might go out with a bang at Crown Jewel. Stay tuned for their match to find out the winner.
