WWE News: John Cena hits Alex Riley's finisher on SmackDown Live

John Cena and Alex Riley have a storied history
John Cena and Alex Riley have a storied history

What’s the story?

Tonight on SmackDown Live, John Cena hit AJ Styles with everything he had in his quest to defeat The Phenomenal One which saw Cena added to the Fastlane main event - but you may have missed one thing Cena threw at Styles: the finishing move of a former WWE Superstar he has a lot of history with.

In case you didn’t know…

Alex Riley joined WWE in 2007 and spent a few years in former developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling, where he went on to become the champion. Riley then finished the third position overall in the poll for NXT's 2010 NXT season under the mentorship of The Miz.

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Riley would then appear on the main roster as The Miz’s apprentice and move to singles competition after a few months. In 2013, A-Ry took up a commentary role on NXT.

The promising Superstar returned to wrestling in 2015 and continued to compete until he was released by the WWE in May 2016.

Alex Riley had cited that an incident with John Cena changed the course of his career in the past.

The heart of the matter

Well, during John Cena's victory over AJ Styles, he hit The Phenomenal One with Riley's finishing move - the TKO! AJ Styles would kick out at two, however.

You can see the move below.

What's next?

Well, this one seems to have slipped past a lot of the WWE Universe.

Will Alex Riley respond? Who knows. He isn't the most active man on social media, although he has shot to fame in Netflix original series GLOW recently.

Meanwhile, John Cena has stamped his ticket to Fastlane's main event where he will compete for the WWE Championship.

Author's take

This was a cool thing to see, and it always was a pretty cool move. Cena hit it well, too!

It'll be interesting to see if anything else comes of this.


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Edited by anirudh.b
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