WWE’s Official Storyline Reason For Pulling John Cena From Crown Jewel Event

John Cena was placed into the World Cup Tournament at WWE Crown Jewel because he’s John Cena. But apparently, that was a mistake and they needed to change it up on Raw this week as they announced Bobby Lashley as his replacement.
Baron Corbin did this to draw heat on himself to strengthen the idea that he’s a heel General Manager, but WWE certainly went out of their way to not make Cena’s reason for not attending Crown Jewel too complicated.
We exclusively reported the reasons both Cena and Bryan had for not attending the big event in Saudi Arabia and it looks like they were enough to cause them to cancel their travel plans.
Bryan Alvarez explained on Wrestling Observer Live that WWE didn’t really do much of a job explaining why Cena was being pulled from the event except for the fact that he didn’t qualify.

“What they did was they did a backstage segement where Baron Corbin says: ‘Lashley you’re in the tournament.’ Lashley said: ‘Why?’ Corbin said: ‘Cena didn’t qualify — he’s out.’ That was it. That’s what it took to get John Cena — the biggest star of the 2000’s in WWE off of the Crown Jewel show.”

Therefore, Cena isn’t going because Baron Corbin said so. It makes sense to a degree, but it’s also ironic in a way that Cena didn’t have to qualify because of his status but then they ended up turning that around to be the reason (on television) that he isn’t allowed to attend the event.
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