Former WWE writer Kevin Eck revealed in his latest SportsBlog that singer Justin Bieber wanted to wrestle at least year’s SummerSlam. The proposed match would have seen Bieber teaming up with John Cena and Big Show against The Wyatt Family.
There was undoubtedly some concern about Bieber’s public image and how that would contrast with John Cena’s squeaky-clean, never-give-up persona. Eck says WWE had a solution for how to handle that, including a payoff angle that would have gotten WWE a ton of mainstream publicity.
Here is an excerpt from the blog explaining what would have gone down:
The proposed match was discussed among the booking team (which I was on) about five months before SummerSlam, but a deal with Bieber never came to fruition. I’m not sure how close it was to actually happening.
My concern at the time was that Cena teaming up with Bieber — who was making headlines for all the wrong reasons and most definitely would have been booed unmercifully by the WWE audience — would not have done Cena, the face of the company, any favors. To address that concern, the creative suggestion was that Cena would become increasingly annoyed by Bieber in the weeks leading up to the match, but Big Show, who would be portrayed as Bieber’s friend, would repeatedly play peacemaker.
After the babyfaces went over in the match, Bieber would be so obnoxious in trying to take credit for the win that Cena would hit the Attitude Adjustment on him for a big pop. Another point that was raised when discussing the potential match was whether it would have been a bad PR move for WWE to do business with Bieber. The feeling from the powers that be was that if Mayweather liked him, then Bieber must be OK.
