John Cena played the hits during his retirement tour last year, but he didn’t directly face one of his well-renowned on-screen rivals.
Cena and Adam Copeland paid homage to each other in their respective matches; Cena speared Sami Zayn on SmackDown, and Copeland did Cena’s moves during his All Out match against FTR.
Copeland recently said in an interview with Ariel Helwani that he believes Tony Khan would have allowed him to return to WWE for a one-off match against Cena last year. Khan confirmed that belief in an interview with Metro’s Alistair McGeorge.
I was never asked, and as far as I know, Adam was never asked, so it’s hard to say. But when there have been opportunities to collaborate, I have been collaborative in the past.
I never got asked, but if I had been presented a plan and the dates and the information of what was going on, yeah, I would have supported it.
Khan, like Copeland, stressed that WWE never asked him about potentially involving Copeland in Cena’s farewell tour.
The closest WWE and AEW have come to a partnership was in 2021, when Chris Jericho appeared on Steve Austin’s podcast on the WWE Network.
Also in the Metro interview, Khan debunked rumors that AEW would have to scale down pyro after government advice over the risk of fires due to the recent heatwave in Europe.
