Massive Problem With John Cena’s Tournament Highlighted By WWE Legend

In the lead-up to the Backlash PLE, John Cena had been teasing a “history-making” announcement.

Naturally, viewers began speculating what the surprise could be. One of the largely predicted topics was about Club WWE, the Stamford promotion’s annual membership program that offered exclusive benefits to subscribers.

However, when he appeared at the premium live event, John Cena did not even briefly reference Club WWE. It was entirely about the launch of a new championship, plus an evening created around it called the John Cena Classic, where wrestlers from NXT will be pitted against the main roster talent.

Cena also explained that viewers would play a massive role in it, as there would be voting involved on their part. Cena claimed that a wrestler who lost could also be crowned as the champion as a result of receiving the most votes.

It was not the most seamless announcement, as fans were left asking more questions.

WWE Veteran Highlights Issues With John Cena’s Backlash Announcement

John Cena’s Backlash announcement highlighted WWE’s intent to become more fan-friendly, which has not been the case of late due to issues like ticket prices and association with Saudi Arabia, to name a few.

While getting people to vote for the winner seems like a good initiative, it is also seemingly one of the major issues that John Cena Classic could face.

Following the announcement from Cena, veteran wrestler Lance Storm shared a glaring issue with the concept of a higher paid wrestler challenging a talent with lower wage.

He explained that should the NXT talent managed to beat a main roster name based on viewers’ votes, it would come as a huge setback for them and could land them in the bad books of TKO.

While speaking on his My World podcast, Jeff Jarrett echoed similar sentiments as those by Storm.

I get it from a business perspective. It’s the funnel to get people engaged and there’s going to be an X poll, there’s going to be a TikTok poll, they’re going to be on every social media platform. There’s going to be all kinds of social custom content and, I don’t know if they announced the sponsor for this, but that’s probably going to be one of John’s VO accounts that he has.

But from the storytelling component of this, you can become champion and you don’t have to win your matches…we may be all kind of overthinking this, and it is what it is, because the whole world knows we’re scripted entertainment, but we at least want to get lost in the story, someone trying to WIN the title.

It takes that component out, the suspension of disbelief, what matters in our world, as we’re watching this two hour or three hour episode or three hour premium live event. [If we don’t need to] get immersed in the story, why do we care when a hip toss happens or a false finish happens or there’s a spectacular move off the top rope?

H/T: Wrestling Observer