WWE announced prior to RAW this week that John Cena had suffered an ankle injury. WWE mentioned that Cena’s status for the Royal Rumble match is now unclear after the injury.
We have the latest rumor to pass your way about Cena’s injury.
This comes via Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio (subscribe here).
According to Meltzer, Cena’s injury is a work. Cena started filming another movie on January 20th in Vancouver. It looks like the injury angle was a way to write him off from the Royal Rumble PPV on Sunday.
Meltzer speculated that the original plan might have been for Lars Sullivan to injure Cena on RAW, which would have pulled him from the Rumble match. Cena vs Sullivan is a match that has been rumored for Wrestlemania 35 and this could have been the way to set it up. After Lars reportedly no-showed his RAW match a few weeks ago, those plans have been put in serious jeopardy.
My Take: This actually makes a lot of sense to me. In an interview a few months ago, Cena said that he wouldn’t be competing in the Royal Rumble match because he is filming a movie. I think that WWE might have used Cena to try and sell some extra tickets for the Rumble PPV, with no intention of him ever competing. Cena has also mentioned in interviews that he isn’t allowed to wrestle while filming a movie.
On a related note, check out the latest injury update on Akam from AOP.