We’re just six weeks away from the official end of John Cena’s illustrious career and instead of already having a final opponent announced for him and using his few TV appearances to build said match, WWE is doing the “Last Time is Now” tournament to choose his final opponent. Following his disastrous heel turn, this feels like another big misstep in Cena’s retirement year.

On Saturday, WWE announced all the tournament participants, plus five additional wrestlers. Those five could be talent who don’t work for WWE, meaning at least some of them will be TNA talent (no, it will not be Edge). Tonight, Adam Pearce used a raffle drum (or a tumbler) to pick which Superstars will face each other next week. Rusev will take on Damian Priest while Shinsuke Nakamura will try to beat Sheamus to earn a tournament spot. Nick Aldis will announce two additional matches on “SmackDown”.

Cena will make his final appearance in his home state of Massachusetts when “Raw” comes to Boston next week. While it hasn’t been announced what he’s doing on the show, we can assume he’ll be watching the two tournament matches closely. Of course, Cena will address the crowd to get a massive hometown pop. It still feels like a waste of an appearance when he could be having an in-ring segment with his final opponent. WWE should be building up Cena’s final match as a bigger deal by already revealing who his opponent is instead of dragging it out.

Written by Samantha Schipman

There’s no doubt that CM Punk, Jey Uso, Bron Breakker, and Bronson Reed deserve their flowers for being regarded as some of the biggest names among WWE’s men’s division. With that said, I just couldn’t really get into their main event match due to its later start time and the finish of the match.

I can understand WWE wanting to keep all four men in this match looking strong by choosing to end things in a count out so that no one has to take a loss, but at the same time, it’s a really boring ending to watch as a viewer. WWE has done countless similar endings to this one over the last several weeks during “Raw” main events (albeit more often than not as disqualifications that cause matches to end in a no contest), making it a predictable finish that many fans are able to see coming week in and week out.

The post match beatdown The Vision launched on Jey and Punk didn’t really help add any unpredictability, nor did Logan Paul’s involvement in everything. Not only do Reed and Breakker usually blindside people with attacks after most main events of “Raw”, but it wasn’t super hard to guess that Paul would betray Punk at the end of the show. I personally had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of Paul even remotely being a babyface because he feels like such a natural heel character in the professional wrestling business, so it wasn’t much of a surprise for me when he hit Punk with the brass knuckles. Moreover, I can get WWE wanting to leave things on a cliffhanger as to whether or not Paul is now a member of The Vision or just an ally, but him handing over the brass knuckles to Paul Heyman felt more confusing than anything else to decipher. It somehow wasn’t engaging or fun viewing for me personally whilst somehow still being a lot to take in all at once with how abrupt the new Paul/Vision alliance is.

Written by Olivia Quinlan