John Cena’s father has publicly criticized WWE over the booking of his son’s one-sided loss to Brock Lesnar at WrestlePalooza. Appearing on Sportskeeda WrestleBinge, John Cena Sr. blasted the creative direction, calling the bout a poorly executed “squash match.”
He argued the match lacked logic from both business and storytelling perspectives, especially after Paul Heyman’s pre-match promo.
“I don’t understand it. Not because he’s my son, but I came up with a couple of scenarios. That was a squash match—when Heyman came out and said ‘the last real a—kicker,’ that’s when I knew Cena was done. It’s over,” Cena Sr. said. “It’s going to be the same type of thing as when he gave Cena fifteen F5s. I sat down and thought it shouldn’t go down that way. Brock doesn’t need that rub at all. There were many ways it could have been better than the way I saw it go down. In this business, you want to make fans happy sometimes.”
He pointed to the live crowd’s reaction as proof the segment failed, questioning the decision to book a departing star in such a decisive loss during an eight-minute match.
“When I saw those kids crying, that’s not how you want to run business. Why would you take the man on a tour who’s leaving and beat him? It makes no sense to me at all,” he said. “I don’t even call that a match—it was a squash. That’s all it was. Eight minutes! That could have been so much better, with so much more thrill and spill.”
Cena Sr. added that the creative team’s focus on presenting Lesnar as unstoppable came at too high a cost.
“Apparently whoever wrote it intended to show Brock as the Beast—now the Beast has decimated the GOAT and the story is to see who the Beast’s next victim will be. That was the intent, and it was a poor way to put it over.” (h/t Ringside News)
The WrestlePalooza loss ended Cena’s feud with Lesnar. However, his next major program is already confirmed. Triple H announced Tuesday that Cena will face AJ Styles at WWE Crown Jewel in Perth, Australia, on Saturday, October 11. The match will be their fifth singles encounter, serving as a tie-breaker with their current record at 2-2.