John Cena was not happy about coming out on the losing end of his ‘Once in a Lifetime’ match against The Rock.
Cena and The Rock made history in 2011, as they set up the main event of WrestleMania 28 a year in advance, agreeing to the generational bout on the RAW after WrestleMania 27.
The match got a year-long build, which even featured the pair tagging with each other at Survivor Series 2011 before their massive clash in Miami, Florida.
Mike Chioda reveals John Cena didn’t want to lose to The Rock at WrestleMania 28
According to former WWE referee Mike Chioda, who was the official for the match between John Cena and The Rock at WrestleMania, the 17-time world champion was unhappy about losing to his rival.
Chioda shared a clip from the closing stretch of the match and gave an 11-word response that sent the IWC into shambles.
It’s hard to say how much truth there is to Chioda’s comments, especially given how unreliable figures in wrestling can be when retelling their versions of events.
However, Chioda was an official who was close to Cena, refereeing most of his matches during the time he was with the company.
On top of that, Chioda would have likely been in the briefing about the layout of the match, given how important referees are, and would presumably have seen Cena’s reaction in real time.
If what he is saying is true, it does reframe the context of what was WWE’s biggest match at the time, and how things went after this.
In the build to the match, things had gotten heated between Cena and Rock, with the former even pointing out that The Rock was using handwritten notes for his promo segments.
These comments led to a genuine tension between the two superstars, which would have made Vince McMahon’s decision to have The Rock go over not sit well with the leader of the Cenation.
McMahon likely saw the box office numbers that Cena and Rock’s clash generated, making WrestleMania 28 the most profitable PPV event in the company’s history at the time, and wanted to squeeze as much out of the pairing as possible.
In storyline, Cena’s loss to The Rock was going to be the catalyst behind the worst year of his WWE career, which was marked by high-profile losses to superstars like CM Punk and Dolph Ziggler.
However, the inconsistent week-to-week storytelling from the WWE at the time, combined with the baffling decision to have Cena win his very next match against a returning Brock Lesnar, led to the story being slightly muddled.
In the end, the storyline was designed to get Cena more sympathy going into 2013, where he would win the Royal Rumble and challenge The Rock, who took the title off of CM Punk, for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.
The storyline didn’t work out as they had hoped, and the rematch between Cena and Rock was not well-received, partly due to The Rock suffering an injury early in the match.
The ironic aftermath of this decision inadvertently led to The Rock not wrestling a match in WWE till 2024, when he main-evented WrestleMania 40 in a tag-team match with Roman Reigns against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins.
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