Although they’d faced each other a few times near the start of John Cena’s WWE career, these two legends had mostly stayed apart over the years. For the longest time this match was considered as a dream match, though WWE didn’t pull the trigger on booking Cena vs The Undertaker. When The Undertaker was getting towards the end of his career, and when Cena was getting into being a part-timer, WWE finally decided to book a match between the pair for WrestleMania, albeit several years too late. Either way, it finally happened, but the match ended up going down in a very unexpected way, with some fans wondering why it turned out the way it did.

UPDATE: 2023/03/28 07:30 EST BY ANDREW KELLY

The Undertaker vs. John Cena at WrestleMania 34 is one of the more peculiar and bizarre matches in WWE history. Despite fans waiting for years to see these two men compete on the Grandest Stage of Them All, it all came to an end in a matter of minutes as The Undertaker completely squashed Cena with ease. The Undertaker has commented publicly on the match a few times, whereas Cena has only given a few soundbites when it comes to the match. Either way, both do give some insight into why this match was so short, and why The Undertaker squashed Cena.

The Undertaker Wanted Redemption, And Readied Himself For A 45-Minute Match

Following what looked very much like a retirement the previous year at WrestleMania 33, John Cena decided to call out The Undertaker for one more match. Undertaker’s match against Roman Reigns ended up being one of the worst WrestleMania main events of all time, with him not in a fit state to compete, looking slow, old, and lethargic. There was a need inside him for redemption, and this led to him coming back for a match against John Cena.

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When speaking on his Last Ride documentary on the WWE Network, he explained his displeasure with the match against Reigns. “I looked old, I looked slow, I was overweight, I could not move. It just wasn’t Undertaker-esque in any sense. I had one match too many. So that’s when the wheel started turning like, I need redemption.” (h/t EssentiallySports) From there, Undertaker went through intense training to get back to where he needed to be, though this was getting harder and harder with his age and the wear and tear on his body. Either way, he felt as though he was ready to even go for a full 45 minutes against Cena.

The Undertaker Beat John Cena In Two Minutes

Imagining Undertaker at that stage wrestling for 45 minutes feels a little absurd, but he seemed to believe that he had the conditioning to do it. When arriving at the show, he was under the impression that two superstars like them would have a lot of time to create an iconic match. However, with WrestleMania 34 being packed to the brim with matches - fourteen to be exact, including the pre-show, there wasn’t a lot of time to be shared around.

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Due to the length of the show and other matches such as Triple & Stephanie McMahon vs Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle, The Miz vs Finn Balor vs Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar, and AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura all getting given a good chunk of time each, it left The Undertaker and John Cena being a match which was squeezed onto the card. They were told going in that they had under five minutes to work with when it came to their match length between the ropes.

This was gutting news to hear for The Undertaker, who had expected a long match which would help to redeem him. However, both men decided to do what they could with the time given, and instead of a 40-minute epic, they went with something rather unexpected. Aside from a brief flurry from Cena, Undertaker absolutely destroyed him. Looking quicker and more agile than he had done in quite some time, he beat Cena down, hitting all his signature offense. He pulled out his greatest hits and defeated Cena in 2 minutes and 45 seconds, squashing him in a complete shock.

WWE May Not Have Trusted The Undertaker’s Ability

It was never really confirmed that this was the case, but there is a very high chance that WWE also kept this match short due to his performance the year before. Aside from just his word, there wasn’t really any proof that he would be any better than he was against Roman Reigns.

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There may very well have been a hesitance from WWE to book him in another longer match for fear that the same thing would occur once again with him failing to live up to the billing and having a bad match, dampening the show.

Either way, it was clear that he was in much better shape and was moving a lot sharper, but time constraints got in the way, in addition to the desire to do something to shock the WWE Universe from Vince McMahon. It was fine for what it was, but even if they were given time, it wouldn’t have been as good as it would’ve ten years prior when WWE should have undoubtedly booked the match for WrestleMania amongst his other string of streak-defending classics. It will always be looked back on as a missed opportunity.

John Cena Was Unsure If The Undertaker Would Even Compete

As noted in documentaries such as The Last Ride, The Undertaker wasn’t fully at 100% when it came to WrestleMania, suffering from some hip issues. For this reason, the official announcement of the match was kept back until moments before the match itself, with The Wrestling Observer stating that WWE didn’t want to let the fans down by overhyping such a major dream match.

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Speaking on the Pat McAfee Show, Cena went into this briefly, explaining that him sitting in the crowd and waiting for confirmation on the match was partly real.

Cena sat in the crowd and made friends with fans whilst drinking beers, and he even stated that he got a little drunk, ““Literally, I [John Cena] crushed three tall drafts[beers] before they [WWE] told me The Undertaker was there, and I had to hop the barricade and go wrestle The Undertaker…” (h/t The Sports Rush). This is quite a funny story, though the overriding reason for the match being short was the uncertainty around Undertaker’s condition, and not Cena’s potential intoxication. It didn’t get in the way of his performance at all, with him always professional.