Before he faces Solo Sikoa at this Saturday’s WWE Crown Jewel 2023 premium live event in Saudi Arabia, John Cena appeared on WWE’s YouTube channel to look back at some of his classic battles.
Cena discussed the Iron Man match he had with Randy Orton at the Bragging Rights 2009 PPV, where he talked about the several matches he had with Orton and how good The Viper is in the ring.
Below is what the 16-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion said:
“I think the great thing about an Iron Man match is you can have the luxury of a three count. The three count can elicit excitement. So if people aren’t interested. You can give them a pinfall. The match had a different dynamic to it.
Anytime I can get in there with Randy is great. He and I fit together well and we work together well and I love working with him. This is the fourth premium live event, as we now call them, and we had done a lot of stipulations before, and we’d added tons of stipulations to this match of anything goes and if I lose, I leave RAW.
One could speculate that the possible audience fatigue of watching performers together for half a year is a lot of interaction. So I do remember the concept of. Maybe he should. It hit the pyro and tried to explode me and him being okay with it and not only going to be okay with it, like he really made that work. I think that just goes to show that if we were coming up with concepts like that, we would certainly have exhausted every traditional method of competition.
But the fact that both of us could be like, yeah, that’s a good idea, and let’s wholeheartedly try it. It’s a cool concept, a cool idea. And we were brave enough to try. And that’s, I think, when you’ve had such a history with someone and being in the ring with them. So many times, we both kind of knew like, well, we’re going to have to do some different stuff here.
Randy is my generation’s Shawn Michaels. He has an understanding of nuance and how important it is. He has the best timing of anybody. Like he’s always there, he’s never late. He shows emotion as a performer. He’s incredible. He makes difficult look simple.”
Cena defeated Orton in this Iron Man match by 6-5 falls and won the WWE Championship.
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