John Cena makes a WWE title challenge for the Royal Rumble

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While returning to WWE television for the first time in over two months, John Cena once again set his sights on the WWE Championship on tonight’s year-end edition of SmackDown.

Cena opened the show with a promo and received a big reaction from the Chicago crowd. After taking some time to get to his point, Cena referenced tonight’s WWE title match between AJ Styles, Dolph Ziggler, and Baron Corbin. He went on to mention 2016 not being a great year for him, bringing up that he’s been criticized for being a part-timer and having one foot out the door.

But Cena said that he’s not leaving. He said that it’s not the new era, it’s the “my time is now era.” To conclude the promo, Cena challenged whoever wins tonight’s triple threat main event to a WWE Championship match at the Royal Rumble.

It seems likely that Cena’s challenge sets up him challenging Styles for the WWE title at the Royal Rumble on January 29th in San Antonio, Texas. Styles owns two singles wins over Cena on pay-per-view from earlier this year.

UPDATE: Styles successfully defended the WWE Championship against Ziggler and Corbin, leading Cena to come out and officially set up his title match with Styles at the Royal Rumble.