John Cena’s Acting Schedule Will Conflict With WWE WrestleMania 39 Season

John Cena has been heavily rumored for WrestleMania 39 for the past few months, but his busy acting schedule might keep him away from WWE TV up until the show itself. Variety reported on Tuesday that the upcoming R-Rated comedy Ricky Stanicky, starring Zac Efron and John Cena, will start production next month in Melbourne, Australia and run through March. WrestleMania is scheduled for April 1-2 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. 

While this might be bad news for wrestling fans, it doesn’t completely rule Cena out of the equation. His opponent has been rumored to be current United States Champion Austin Theory and on top of Theory dropping references to Cena on recent episodes of Raw the two reportedly filmed a backstage segment when Cena wrestled on the Dec. 30 episode of SmackDown last month in Tampa. Theory has been pushing for a match with Cena for years and speculation that it might actually happen goes as far back as last year’s SummerSlam. 

“It kind of just blows my mind. It’s so wild. I don’t want to say I didn’t expect it because I’ve always had the motivation and the drive and the determination to be here. But to actually think like, ‘Oh whoa, I can actually get some advice from John Cena’ is just mind-blowing. When you think, who’s your ultimate inspiration in life, whether it’s a baseball player, a football player, a WWE superstar, and to finally meet them and be able to conversate with them about work and how to get better and get to that next level, it’s wild,” Theory told the New York Post last July while discussing the advice Cena had passed to him through their various conversations. 

 “It just takes words out of my mouth, because I think when that moment happens and I’m in the ring with John Cena, man, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I’m gonna say. I don’t know. I have no idea just because like you’re saying and the way you spoke about it, I clearly know what it was like for me growing up watching John, just the story there and how much we’d actually have for a story. Man that’s just so crazy to me. I see it happening for sure,” he added.