8-Time WWE Champion Reveals Scrapped Plans With John Cena
This multi-time WWE champion couldn’t make it on the card during John Cena’s retirement tour.
One of the wrestlers on the roster who didn’t end up having a match against John Cena during his retirement tour was former WWE Champion Drew McIntyre.
McIntyre, who is the latest guest on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight podcast, revealed during the interview the disappointments he faced when WWE would pull the plug on him at the last minute on many occasions or pivot from what was originally planned.
He went on to say that he has learnt to look at the big picture now and is okay with their decisions as long as it works for his character. A recent example he touches upon is his very short WWE Championship reign, which only lasted from January to March 2026 before WWE decided to put the belt back on the waist of Cody Rhodes going into WrestleMania 42.
Another such pivot that McIntyre talks about in the interview is a potential match between him and John Cena at Crown Jewel last year, which eventually became Cena vs AJ Styles.
Drew McIntyre Reveals WWE’s Scrapped Plans Between Him And John Cena
In the same interview, McIntyre reveals how the plan changed from WWE booking a match for him with John Cena to later pivoting and having AJ Styles in it.
Crap happens. Sometimes you go down one path, it doesn’t work, and you’ve got to go back on the path and deal with the fallout from it. I can be personally upset, or I can be like, ‘Alright, there would have been a tag match here.’
There was another match prior to that involving more than I was supposed to give away all the details, like John out there. But yeah, there was a plan for something else, and then something changed, and then we had another pitch, and we ended up with the AJ match.
McIntyre says that he would’ve liked to see how it went with John Cena, and then Cena’s match with Styles could have gone on as planned.
So it wasn’t public, myself and John. I would have liked to see what me and John could have done and still get the AJ match.