John Cena is apparently full of surprises now that he’s back to being a babyface, and tonight, he surprised the crowd in Montreal by actually wrestling a match on television, something I don’t believe he’s done much, if at all, on the retirement tour. Cena and WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, who seemed to settle their differences last week between Cena’s babyface turn on Friday and their SummerSlam match on Sunday, teamed up to take on Logan Paul and Drew McIntyre in the main event on Friday.

Cena previously teamed with Paul against Rhodes and Jey Uso at Money in the Bank, but this still worked pretty well between their opening promo battle, Paul challenging Cena to a match at Clash in Paris, and Paul low blowing Cena tonight to cause the disqualification. This was all fine and good tonight, because I didn’t assume Cena would wrestle too much on a random episode of “SmackDown” after having a hell of a match against Rhodes at SummerSlam less than five days ago. Rhodes started off the match, took a majority of the beating, and then Cena got the hot tag.

Once involved in the match, Cena played a few of the greatest hits, including hitting the Five Knuckle Shuffle and the Attitude Adjustment to Paul. Paul hit the low blow to Cena in front of the referee, getting himself disqualified, but that made sense for his heel character. They brawled to the back, or really, Paul kind of chased Cena back to gorilla, which was fine to keep the former champion protected and even better to get the focus entirely on the champion and his next challenger.

Honestly, it’s very strange why WWE would bring back Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam and then have Cena go directly into a program against Paul, but I can’t say I hate it, especially after Cena showed off what he can still do in the ring on Sunday. He very well could have an awesome match against “The Maverick” at the end of the month, because as we all know, Paul is sadly disgustingly good. I didn’t expect to see a Cena match tonight, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what we were going to get after the return of Lesnar on Sunday, so this short match, with some storyline implications for Cena and Paul, and even more for Rhodes and McIntyre, was a good way to end the night.

Written by Daisy Ruth