When John Cena made his return to WWE in 2023, it turned heads across the promotion, from champions like Roman Reigns and Austin Theory to young stars like Grayson Waller and even performers in the middle like Baron Corbin, who once famously wrestled “The Face That Runs the Place” at SummerSlam 2017.
Would Cena take another shot at the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, a belt he came up short for at SummerSlam 2021? Or would he finally add the Intercontinental Championship to his resume, the final belt needed to become a Grand Slam Champion, even if it came at the expense of Gunthers' incredible title reign?
Well, as it turned out, none of the above, as Cena instead made it a point to help out the next generation of stars, from putting over Grayson Waller at Money in the Bank to wrestling with LA Knight at Fastlane and against Solo Sikoa at the forthcoming Crown Jewel. This willingness to put others over, in the opinion of Corbin as part of an appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, is what truly makes Cena special, as he's more than willing to give back to the business that provided him so much.
“It's amazing for the Superstars for a Grayson Waller. I don't think he ever sat there. You're like, ‘Man, I'm gonna be in the ring with John Cena.' It's just not something you think about this day and age because Cena's a movie star. What he's doing is incredible, and what the level he's reached is amazing,” Baron Corbin told Chris Van Vliet via Fightful.
“So you're like, ‘No, he's not gonna come back and wrestle. If he does, it's gonna be Roman, or it's gonna be Seth.' John is so giving back to this industry, this business because he loves it with every bit of what he does. I've soaked up an immense amount of knowledge from John, and I see John on a regular basis because I go to his gym, and we talk, or we've been to dinner, and his mind for this is just leaps and bounds above 99% of the people in this in this industry. So when you soak up that information — now he's passing it on to guys like Grayson Waller and stepping in the ring with Solo [Sikoa], and all of these guys, they're getting an opportunity to be in there with greatness, where they may never have thought they were gonna do that.”
Could Cena have made this return all about himself? Sure, all he would have had to do was mention wanting to wrestle against someone for some belt in an interview or on a podcast Logan Paul-style, and it would have effectively forced the hand of WWE. By choosing to put over younger talents, Cena has instead decided that the health of the business is more important than his individual accomplishments, and that is incredibly admirable.
Baron Corbin reveals how he'd like to be remembered in WWE.
Turning his attention from the future to his own legacy, Baron Corbin was asked how he wants to be remembered when he hangs up his boots and steps away from full-time in-ring wrestling.
While Corbin would like to get back to the main event before his time in the ring comes to an end, in the end, he simply wants to be appreciated for what he did for the business, even if fans didn't necessarily like him while he was doing it.
“I mean, you have to be on a level of like Seth, Roman, and John Cena to go away for five years and come back and do it in your late 40s or early 50s for some guys who come back. You have to be on this certain level of magnitude, I think. Now, I've been in the ring with all those guys, but am I on that level? Humbly, I like to say I'm not. Six years from now, do they call me back, ‘Hey, we want you to come back and make a big run.' I don't know if I'm going to be that guy for them to do that. I hope. I mean that that's the goal. The goal is to continue to grind, and that's what I'm doing in NXT. Hunter has challenged me to reinvent myself, and I'm doing that. I feel like I'm doing it really well and so it could launch back to where we go back to SmackDown or RAW, and I have a nice couple of months where it really they're like, ‘Oh, man. it's catching fire,' randomly, and then the next thing you know, you're in the ring with Roman Reigns or Cody at WrestleMania or whatever it is. That could elevate me like put a button on my career of, ‘No, he really is that guy.' You were in that position. A lot of people, again, refused to call me a ‘main-eventer,' but for over three years straight, I was in every single main event there was,” Corbin said via Fightful.
“I feel like wrestling fans have a short memory sometimes. Whatever you've done recently, that's what you are. Let's look at the whole thing,” Corbin said. “You don't look at a football player and go ‘Ah, he's not a Hall of Famer because his last season wasn't very good, but the eight seasons before that he was an all-pro player,' or he rushed for 2000 yards and then all of a sudden he had a bad year, they don't go, ‘He's not a good football player.' Let's look at the whole thing. Let's open the book. Let's see what I've done, who I've been in the ring with, and I think when you look at that as a whole, you go, ‘Huh, yeah, maybe he is a main-eventer. I may have hated him, but the dude could go.'”
Will Corbin eventually see his name in the WWE Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Roman Reigns, Kurt Angle, and many of the other in-ring performers he's shared the ring with on huge matches on Premium Live Events? Only time will tell, but as he noted, sometimes it takes some space to really see a career in the proper context.