Booking John Cena vs. AJ Styles to Avoid Repeating WWE’s Brock Lesnar Disaster

What should be a hyped time for the John Cena retirement tour, exiting a historic Brock Lesnar match, is instead one of anxiety for fans. 

Cena’s match with Lesnar, after all, wound up an unmitigated disaster just weeks before he’s scheduled to take on AJ Styles in a match at Crown Jewel from Perth, Australia on October 11. 

Thankfully for everyone, fans included, Cena-Styles can book the feud and match in a way that is the polar opposite of the Lesnar debacle.

First, the trainwreck. By now, the majority of fans know what went down at the poorly-named Wrestlepalooza. Cena went out and got squashed by Lesnar at the PLE, a completely odd decision by all involved that was aimed at making Lesnar look amazing to casual fans on the first WWE PLE to stream on ESPN.

Cena looked like a chump in the process, with WWE going unnecessarily cruel, too, considering he did his entrance with a bunch of kids wearing his attire, then cameras made sure to pick up kids in the crowd in tears after his loss. 

Just an odd thing all around, yet not so odd when one considers how miserable the majority of Cena’s retirement tour booking has gone. To tick off a few boxes, think, the failed heel turn, The Rock, Travis Scott, R-Truth and now squashed by Lesnar, not to start a feud and rematch, but to make the…48-year-old part-timer look good? 

Anyway, a feud with Styles gives everyone a chance to course correct. Put the train back on some semblance of tracks, at least. 

The groundwork for this already happened, too. Where the Lesnar feud was set up by a random attack and then the two, for some reason avoiding each other on weekly shows, Cena took to social media to build the feud by “campaigning” Triple H for the match. Styles, meanwhile, expressed frustration in interviews about not getting a Cena match. 

It’s a little thing…but it’s a start. The experiment is again appreciated and, frankly, the build is already slowly creeping toward being one of the best of the retirement tour. 

From here, Cena and Styles can go some interesting ways while building the feud. Since he’s been in WWE for so long, it’s almost easy to forget what a juggernaut of an international star Styles was for so long. Cena can certainly remind audiences of that. 

There’s also the dynamic of Styles retiring in 2026. Getting this out there in front of huge audiences and working it into the story, even if it’s just Styles being prematurely bitter because his tour won’t get as many headlines as Cena’s, would be a nice way to build things. 

Don’t forget the match itself, either. Lesnar-Cena, predictably, just spammed finishers. It’s not even worth a rewatch, but Lesnar ate, what, three finishers and kicked out before hitting three-plus F-5s for the win? 

Frankly, that was insulting to viewers. We weren’t that far removed from Cena putting on a really technical, fun match with Logan Paul, of all people. Fans have known for years that while there’s a five-moves-of-doom cliche with Cena, he’s extremely underrated and capable of putting on versatile matches with almost anyone. 

Cena going against Styles has a chance to stress that point in a big way. It would only be fitting if the two go into the matchup in Australia motivated to make that very point. One can almost hear the you still got it chants already.

If nothing else, it will be nice to see a carefully built feud for Cena against a great wrestler that gets the care and attention it deserves before a solid match. Some probably wouldn’t have predicted that Styles will need to bail out Cena’s farewell tour so late in the process, yet here we are. 

If it’s Styles, Randy Orton and CM Punk as the high marks for the Cena goodbye tour over the last year or so, maybe that’s just fitting, really. It’s certainly marquee company for Styles to join and given both men’s importance to the sport over the last few decades, only right. 

While it’s a shame things have come to this, it’s hard to suppress optimism that Cena-Styles, when booked with even the slightest bit of common sense, can be a high mark of the year while bridging the gap between both iconic wrestlers’ retirement journeys. 

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