John Cena Explains What It Would Take for Him to Appear at WrestleMania 37

John Cena made it abundantly clear in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated that he won't be [...]

John Cena made it abundantly clear in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated that he won't be able to physically appear at WrestleMania 37 this coming April. The hang-up that's preventing him for traveling to Tampa for the show is a) the ongoing filming of the HBO Max series Peacemaker in Canada and b) the COVID-19 restrictions that require lengthy quarantines for people traveling in and out of the United States.

In a new interview with Forbes, Cena effectively doubled down on his absence from WrestleMania, explaining everything that would have to happen (and how much it would affect the show's filming) in order for him to be back in the United States for the April 10-11 show .

"If this were normal times, I would 100% be there," Cena said. "I'd find a way to contribute somehow. I've sat in the crowd as a fan. I'll do whatever the event asks me to because it means that much to me, and WWE means that much to me, but I'm in Vancouver shooting Peacemakerfor HBO Max. It's a spinoff series based on my character from Suicide Squad, Peacemaker. It's an unbelievable opportunity, James Gunn has written the whole thing, he's directing a bunch of the episodes.

"This is something that I'm inspired to do," he added. "Because of the quarantine law, if I were to fly to the states for Sunday on WrestleMania — which is totally possible — the complications arrive when I come back to Canada. Because then I would have to quarantine for 14 days and that puts production back more than two weeks, which costs a boatload of money, and that would be super, super, super selfish of me."

Elsewhere in the same interview, Cena tackled Undertaker's recent "soft" comments about the current WWE product.

"I guess I've viewed the WWE as a product outside of myself for a long time," he said. "I guess that's why I was so interested in the business side of it from very early on in my career. In that, I've seen it evolve, but I've also been called 'everything that's ruined sports entertainment.' I could look at the economics of it and make an argument that between myself--and the large amount of folks that carried on the roster beyond the Attitude Era into the Ruthless Aggression Era and the Reality Era — the fans of the Attitude Era certainly looked at our product as not what they're used to, and it wasn't. So I may have a bit of disagreement with Undertaker's word choice because I don't think it's soft, I think it's different."

"I remember one of the first time Steve Austin came back during the height of the PG era, and he was just befuddled," he added. "Because Steve Austin goes out there and runs it. And if he gets stuck, he can curse, he can throw up some middle fingers, he can ask for a beer...but we took away three of the biggest clubs that he can hit with and told him to go out there and be himself. And he came back shaking his head and said 'I don't know how you do this!' But if he had enough time, he's a great performer, he could get used to it."

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