Will WrestleMania help bolster John Cena's acting career?

Just before the birth of the "Attitude Era," Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy joined Diesel and Shawn Michaels for the main event. Rob Gronkowski, Shaq, and William "The Refrigerator" Perry have done gimmicky appearances in battle royals and the like. Once Lawrence Taylor wrestled Bam Bam Bigelow and beat him, which is empirically funny. Taylor is one of the very normal, very chill people to be at WrestleMania. Pete Rose, G. Gordon Liddy, Mike Tyson, you know, guys like that.

Even just a few years ago, in 2022, Johnny Knoxville wrestled Sami Zayn in an Anything Goes match. In an Anything Goes match, of course, a glimpse of stocking is looked on as something shocking. Wrestling fans enjoy references to 1930s musicals, right? 

Even though WrestleMania is now a two-night event, the celebrity involvement has been muted. In 2024, for the 40th WrestleMania, there weren't any celebrity matches, and there was limited celebrity involvement. Some Internet Guy was there, and so was Snoop Dogg, but we're pretty sure Snoop Dogg long ago developed the ability to teleport himself anywhere that offers him 20 bucks and a joint. The Internet Guy was there in support of Very Famous Internet Guy Logan Paul, but Logan Paul is a semi-regular professional wrestler at this point. That may be the thing now. The celebrities are the wrestlers. More to the point, the celebrities are wrestlers who became celebrities and have returned to wrestling to rebuild their celebrity.

To that end, the first night of WrestleMania XL culminated in a match involving Dwayne Johnson in full The Rock mode. After "Black Adam" was fired out of a cannon into the sun, Johnson's status as a movie star was slipping. He (one imagines begrudgingly) returned to the "Fast and Furious" franchise, and he also returned to wrestling. This was Big News, and probably didn't hurt the returns for "Red One" and "Moana 2," even if the latter was middling and the former is possibly a war-crime-level chemical weapon in terms of quality. Both made money, and now Johnson is starring in a Safdie Brother's movie (as opposed to a Safdie Brothers movie).

This brings us to 2025's WrestleMania. The event culminated in John Cena squaring off with Cody Rhodes. Cena is doing a "last hurrah" kind of thing, though that tends not to take in wrestling. While Cena has never been a Johnson-level success as an actor, he has been a relevant actor, and he's also faced a downturn recently on that front. He starred in "Peacemaker" in 2022, and wouldn't you know it, the second season debuts in August of this year. 

Cena, like Johnson, is in the declining "Fast-verse," but he was a late comer and is but a piece of that tapestry. In 2024, he was in two flops "Argylle" and "Ricky Stanicky." Right now on his upcoming filmography there is an actor movie that's been roiling since 2020 and may end up buried and a movie that co-stars Jessica Biel, which is not necessarily a sign of boffo box office these days. Maybe he will benefit from the fact "Coyote vs. Acme" is actually going to come out, but not until 2026.

Once upon a time, the WWE(F) turned to celebrities to create a sense of pomp and circumstance for WrestleMania. Now, though, with wrestling a viable springboard to an acting career, it can rely on celebrities returning to the fold looking for some juice, which in turn creates a virtuous cycle by juicing the WWE. Also, "juicing" is maybe not the best word to use when it comes to professional wrestling.

Or, you know, if the second night of WrestleMania hadn't fallen on 4/20, it probably would have been super easy to get Snoop Dogg to show up.