John Cena will return to ‘Smackdown Live’ next month. (WWE)
John Cena has been absent from WWE programming for the past two months, with his most recent appearance being at WrestleMania. So where has Cena been, and when is he expected to be back on SmackDown?
Luckily for fans of John Cena, the champ will evidently be back in less than a month. John Cena’s expected return date is currently July 4th, 2017. Cena recently announced this on Twitter, noting that July 4th can’t come soon enough.
This fit with previous reporting that John Cena was being advertised to appear at this SmackDown Live show at the Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday, July 4th.
Cena has been away filming the movie The Pact, an upcoming comedy that has been shooting in Atlanta, Georgia; that’s what he meant when he referred to “another night in Atlanta” in that tweet. In The Pact, three parents try to prevent their teenage daughters from having sex on prom night. The movie stars Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz.
This movie is the reason that Cena has been away from SmackDown Live for the past two months. He also is the host of the second season of the Fox series American Grit, but this was shot last year during Cena’s previous hiatus.
SmackDown Live is certainly a much different place now than it was when John Cena left in April. For one, The Miz, the person Cena most recently feuded with, isn’t even on SmackDown anymore, having been traded to Raw in the superstar shake up. But in addition, Jinder Mahal is currently the WWE World Champion, having defeated Randy Orton at Backlash. The two have a rematch set for Money in the Bank on June 18th, however, and so it’s possible Orton will regain the title by the time Cena comes back.
It’s safe to say that when Cena returns, he will likely be going after the World Championship pretty soon. After all, the next time Cena wins the title, he will become a 17-time WWE champion. Cena is currently tied with Ric Flair at 16 title reigns, and so the next time he wins, he will become the person who has held the WWE championship more times than anyone else in history.