The new partnership between WWE and ESPN kicks off this Saturday, and it’s already made for at least one awkward moment on Monday Night Football with Chris Fowler seemingly not knowing WWE legend John Cena.
Cena will star in the main event of the first WWE premium live event on the new ESPN direct-to-consumer service when he faces off against longtime rival Brock Lesnar in his return match to the company. The Cena-Lesnar match is one of the biggest that WWE can advertise in 2025, especially considering this is one of Cena’s last shows on his retirement tour.
It’s a new day for WWE and ESPN as the two companies begin this partnership together. We’ve seen promo segments, SportsCenter highlights, and WWE superstars appear on ESPN programming. But when Fowler read a promo for WWE Wrestlepalooza during the Chargers-Raiders game and seemingly didn’t know how to pronounce Cena’s name, it showed that there might still be some growing pains in the WWE-ESPN marriage.
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In fairness to Chris Fowler, it was pretty clear he was struggling with not feeling his best throughout the entirety of the late game of the Monday Night Football doubleheader. Fowler was calling the late game in one of this year’s MNF doubleheaders alongside Louis Riddick and Dan Orlovsky after just calling Tennessee-Georgia for ESPN on Saturday.
But the fact that he went with John “Say-na” instead of John “See-na” multiple times shows that he might not familiar with WWE. Apparently Fowler hasn’t seen any John Cena films from The Marine to Heads of State either. Thankfully, it stopped there and we didn’t have to see the ESPN crew try to dive in to the intricacies of his failed heel turn and sudden character change.
It’s clearly going to take a long time to get accustomed to seeing WWE regularly mentioned on ESPN, even for the talents themselves.
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