{"id":134271,"date":"2025-04-21T20:57:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T00:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=134271"},"modified":"2025-04-22T00:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T04:40:21","slug":"john-cena-randy-orton-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/04\/21\/john-cena-randy-orton-backlash\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cena Seems to Have Found his First Title Challenger for Backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello darkness, my old friend. WrestleMania 41 is in the books but its results will stand the test of time. Just ask the 17-time world champion, John Cena, who arrived to the Raw after Mania continuing to share his thoughts on the fans, pro wrestling, Cody Rhodes, and more in advance of his next scheduled appearance at Backlash.<\/p>\n<h2>John Cena vs Randy Orton &#8211; A Backlash Rematch?<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;Winners write history,&#8221; Cena opened his promo before beginning to eviscerate the fans as he has been doing for weeks. Cena said the fans bullied him over the last few weeks and they thought they could just show up tonight and he&#8217;s supposed to forgive them? Cena said that was not how a functional relationship works. He said the fans can still go straight to hell as they don&#8217;t matter. They owe him an apology. Fans tried with a &#8220;we are sorry\/no we aren&#8217;t&#8221; dueling chant to which Cena said they are sorry, the sorriest lowlifes he&#8217;s ever seen. The fans began an asshole chant as Cena called them soft. He&#8217;s taken their best over the years but has always gotten back up. He tells the Vegas crowd they won&#8217;t be the crowd to finally crack him as they mean nothing and their noise means nothing.<\/p>\n<p>36. That&#8217;s the only thing that means something. When Cena appeared on the Raw on Netflix debut he said he had 36 dates left before he was done. And time passes quickly as Cena reminded the fans of the dates they already lost. After tonight, it&#8217;s down to 27. When that clock hits zero, he&#8217;s gone. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/02\/27\/john-cena-retirement-tour-every-confirmed-date-and-city-as-legend-says-goodbye-to-wwe-in-2025\/\" target=\"_self\">Cena made sure to clarify, its not 36 matches, its 36 appearances<\/a>. Fans say he can&#8217;t wrestle, well he doesn&#8217;t have to. He just has to show up and that&#8217;s the easy part. Cena said when that number of dates hits zero, he&#8217;s taking the title held by Bruno Sammartino, Roman Reigns, CM Punk, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, and so many others home with him.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"FULL SEGMENT: Randy Orton ROCKS John Cena with the RKO: Raw highlights, April 21, 2025\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cL3GIEPWink?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Cena said he&#8217;s the last real undisputed champion and getting the title, that was the hard part. The rest of this is going to be a cake walk. Cena said the best chance fans had was Cody Rhodes, who received boos to which Cena called the fans out before saying Rhodes was outshined, outclassed and outwrestled on Sunday. But&#8230;Cena wasn&#8217;t heartless so he told the fans to take out their phones and get a photo to remember this moment when they saw the last real champ.<\/p>\n<p>As Cena posed with the title, the cameras panned to show a waiting Randy Orton, who did what the Viper does best and hit Cena with an RKO outta nowhere. As the crowd cheered, Orton picked up the title, seemingly making his intentions clear.<\/p>\n<p>While nothing has been confirmed, it seems like Cena has found his first title challenger and its a familiar one. Between the two men, there were 31 world championships in the ring. Many of those titles were exchanged in epic battles between the two men who best personified WWE&#8217;s Ruthless Aggression Era. It seemed all but certain one of Cena&#8217;s 36 dates would be a rematch with perhaps his greatest WWE rival and it seems that match could be coming as soon as Backlash, which takes place in Orton&#8217;s hometown of St. Louis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Header photo \u2013 WWE \u2013<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a> for more on John Cena, Backlash, Raw after Mania, and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>You can check out WWE programming on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81788927\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Netflix<\/a>\u00a0(Raw),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usanetwork.com\/wwe-friday-night-smackdown\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USA Network<\/a>\u00a0(SmackDown),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cwtv.com\/shows\/wwe-nxt\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The CW<\/a>\u00a0(NXT),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/tubitv.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tubi<\/a>\u00a0(WWE Evolve),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aetv.com\/wwe\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A&amp;E<\/a>\u00a0(WWE Superstar Sunday \u2013 Rivals, WWE LFG, and Greatest Moments) and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>\u00a0(WWE Main Event as well as archives and premium live event streaming). Follow WWE on social media to relive top moments and matches on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/wwe\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a>, and catch fast-paced action on X (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/i\/events\/1773457579022155776?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Speed<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello darkness, my old friend. WrestleMania 41 is in the books but its results will stand the test of time. Just ask the 17-time world champion, John Cena, who arrived to the Raw after Mania continuing to share his thoughts on the fans, pro wrestling, Cody Rhodes, and more in advance of his next scheduled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2418,"featured_media":134254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,2192,25,4,3],"tags":[150,165,58,4996],"class_list":["post-134271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-wrestling","category-raw","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","tag-backlash","tag-john-cena","tag-randy-orton","tag-wwe-undisputed-champion"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134271"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134298,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134271\/revisions\/134298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}