John Cena officially out of WWE Royal Rumble
John Cena is officially out of tonight’s Royal Rumble match.
On the WWE Now preview show for tonight’s pay-per-view, it was announced that Cena won’t be in the Royal Rumble. WWE had been advertising Cena as “questionable” for the PPV due to a supposed left ankle injury.
WWE claimed that the injury happened while Cena was facing Drew McIntyre, Finn Balor, and Baron Corbin in a fatal four-way match on the January 14 episode of Raw. They had also stated that Cena aggravated the injury while training at the gym.
Dave Meltzer wrote about Cena’s status for the Royal Rumble in last week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter: “The story going around is that Cena was never to be in the Rumble in the first place, but with a stadium to fill, they advertised Cena, similar to advertising Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman, another match never actually planned, to help sell tickets. As the story goes, Cena was scheduled to be injured by Lars Sullivan at Raw last week, but that all changed because Sullivan is out on leave.”
With Cena out, there are now 19 entrants confirmed for the men’s Rumble:
- R-Truth (will enter at number 30 as a stipulation of winning Mixed Match Challenge)
- Drew McIntyre
- Big E
- Kofi Kingston
- Xavier Woods
- Seth Rollins
- Jeff Hardy
- Dean Ambrose
- Samoa Joe
- Bobby Lashley
- Elias
- Baron Corbin
- Jinder Mahal
- Apollo Crews
- Andrade
- Rey Mysterio
- Mustafa Ali
- Titus O’Neil
- Randy Orton