During John Cena‘s promo on Monday Night Raw, Cena seemingly shot down rumours of him facing The Undertaker at WrestleMania 34 saying “it wasn’t going to happen”. Many people assumed it was a swerve and somehow we’d still end up with the on-again off-again rumoured match of Taker vs Cena. But a lot seems to have changed in the last 24 hours, especially when it came to John Cena’s path to his 15th consecutive WrestleMania. Multiple reports are now stating that none other than Rey Mysterio Jr is now pencilled in to be John Cena’s opponent.
It was first broken this morning by World of Geekdom, who announced that his sources in the WWE told him that Rey Mysterio had been invited to Smackdown Live tonight to work on a potential long term deal, including a match at this year’s WrestleMania, against 16x World Champion John Cena. They also stated that The Undertaker had told WWE he was a “no go” for this year’s WrestleMania, presumably due to health.
The report went seemingly unnoticed until Sports Illustrated‘s Justin Barrasso confirmed the report from his own sources that Mysterio was indeed at Smackdown Live tonight, working on a WrestleMania match against John Cena.
Breaking: Per WWE sources, Rey Mysterio is backstage working out details tonight at SmackDown for a match at WrestleMania. The rumored opponent is John Cena.
— Justin Barrasso (@JustinBarrasso) February 28, 2018
Not including Live Events, this would mark only the third time that John Cena and Rey Mysterio would face each other in a singles match in their entire WWE history together. They’ve worked dozens of tag team matches together – both together and against one another – but they’ve only faced off in singles twice: first on November 4, 2003 on Smackdown (where Cena won), and second on Monday Night Raw on July 25, 2011, when John Cena defeated Mysterio for the WWE Championship. Their final match together was a tag match at a WWE Live Event in Newark, New Jersey in 2013, when the two teamed up to defeat Randy Orton and Alberto Del Rio.
