John Cena Pitched As Member Of Evolution

They were the most dominant faction during WWE’s Ruthless Aggression era. They held all the gold and respected the past, present, and ushered in the future of wrestling. They were Evolution, and WWE was rebuilt in their image.

The team of Triple H, Ric Flair, Randy Orton, and Batista is one of the most celebrated in wrestling history, but according to former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz, John Cena was once pitched as a member of the stable, with Gewirtz telling the Kurt Angle Show podcast:

“The big ‘what if’… now, when I say this, I wanna point out that this was discussed for maybe under two minutes in a single writer’s meeting with Vince [McMahon] but in a single meeting - in which there were hundreds if not thousands of meetings - but this was like during the ‘[Mark] Jindrak to Randy Orton, who’s going to be the fourth member of Evolution’ period of time and I do remember, I don’t know if it was me who said it, somebody said it, I might have said it, was, ‘What about that John Cena guy joining Evolution? What if we did that?’ And again, it was tossed about for a couple minutes and I think it was deemed that John, especially John at that particular time hadn’t really found himself yet. I think this was pre-rapping John, this was, ‘great match with Kurt but then what-John’, ruthless aggression and it was just like, ‘Hmm, I don’t think so. Maybe he’s a little too goofy. He just doesn’t fit’ was kind of like the feedback back then.

“I also threw out Christian [Cage] because I threw out Christian in literally everything, usually to Jay’s detriment because it was like, oh my God, can you stop pitching Christian to do this. But ultimately, we settled on Randy and again, this isn’t like some, ‘John Cena was considered for Evolution’. Like, absolutely yes, for about 120 seconds and then we moved on to something else, but it was brought up and it is a very interesting fun kind of fantasy thing to ponder like, well what if it wasn’t turned down so quickly? What if that actually happened? And the chain reaction domino effect with Randy’s career, John’s career, everything that would have come out of that.”

H/T: POST Wrestling