It's now official: John Cena has retired from wrestling. It's come straight from the horse's mouth that he's completely done with wrestling. His final run ran throughout the year. His appearances were sporadic and wasn't a constant figure in the ring. His appearances didn't involve wrestling every time. An appearance might be a promo or a match. On a rare occasion, both could occur.
It could be said that this whole thing started last year in July at WWE Money In the Bank PLE (Premier Live Event) when he made a surprise appearance to announce his retirement. This obviously sent shockwaves across the world. No one quite knew what to expect. At that point, everything was up in the air.
One thing was sure: he would be appearing at the Netflix debut episode of Raw; at the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania PLEs.
As expected, he made his first appearance on Raw and spoke about how his primary goal was to win a record setting 17th WWE title win. He would announce his participation in the Royal Rumble match. It was also announced that he had 36 dates.
The Royal Rumble match came and he entered at no. 23. He was the runner-up as Jey Uso last eliminated him to win the match. Despite the failure, he gave a very interesting presser where he announced he would enter the Elimination Chamber match at the namesake PLE.
Nearly everyone was puzzled by this presser. No one quite knew what he meant. The other five participants had to qualify for the match. The others to qualify were: CM Punk; Seth Rollins; Logan Paul; Damian Priest and Drew McIntyre.
It's important to note here that while these matches were taking place, The Rock (acting as his "Final Boss" persona) confronted current champion, Cody Rhodes, to sell his soul to The Rock and thus become The Rock's champion. The latter gave Rhodes until the Elimination Chamber to make his decision.
At the PLE, John Cena successfully won the match by defeating CM Punk via technical submission (with a little help from Seth Rollins). Cody Rhodes would come out to congratulate Cena on the win as the two future opponents shared a moment of respect.
What happened next will go down in infamy. The Rock, accompanied by rapper, Travis Scott, came down to the ring for Rhodes' answer. Rhodes turned down the offer and everyone in attendance was thrilled. Cena and Rhodes embraced each other before the unexpected happened...Cena attacked Rhodes and was joined by Scott and The Rock. No one knew what was going down. Cena had turned heel for the first time in 21 years.
About two to three weeks later, Cena emerged to explain his actions, expressing that he believed that no one cared about how he was doing. He claimed that the fans only care about themselves.
What happened next was nothing too exciting. It was just a bunch of promo's between Cena and Rhodes. Wrestlemania came and the two clashed on Night 2. Cena won the match with a little help from Travis Scott. Cena had achieved his goal.
After the PLE, Rhodes went AWOL. Cena claimed that he was the last real champion and that he would ruin wrestling by leaving the business with the title.
Cena would go on to have one final feud with Randy Orton. Nothing exciting happened between the two except for one or two sneak attacks. The two faced off at Backlash and Cena won when he received an unintentional assist from R-Truth.
R-Truth would have a small feud with Cena. The former claimed that his primary goal was to bring back the old John Cena. John Cena would go on to win the match at Saturday Night's Main Event XXXIX (39).
At Saturday Night's Main Event XXXIX, Cena confronted Jey Uso backstage prior to the latter's WWE World Heavyweight title defense against Logan Paul. Cena commented on the possibility of Uso losing his title to "a YouTuber" and how that would "ruin wrestling," something Cena promised to do after declaring his intentions to retire as champion at the end of 2025. Later that night, Cena interfered in the title match on Paul's behalf, only to be thwarted by a returning Rhodes. Uso subsequently pinned Paul to retain his title. After the match, Rhodes declared that he and Uso would face Cena and Paul in a tag team match at Money in the Bank, which was subsequently made official.
Jey Uso and Cody Rhodes would go on to beat Cena and Paul at the PLE.
Cena would go on to feud with CM Punk. One interesting part about this feud was that they each tasted a bit of each other's medicine as Cena delivered a "pipebomb" (popularised by CM Punk) while Punk gave Cena a rap taunt.
At Night of Champions, there was a bit of chaos. Seth Rollins attempted to cash in his Money in the Bank contract during the match. That attempt failed and Cena won by pinfall.
Cody Rhodes would get his rematch at Summerslam by winning the King of the Ring tournament at Night of Champions. What made the match more interesting was that it got turned into a Street Fight.
Something rather interesting happened during this feud in the lead up to Summerslam. All of a sudden, Cena became a babyface (good guy) again and stated that he wanted to remain champion by the end so that people will remember him.
Cody Rhodes successfully defeated John Cena to regain the title. After the match, the two embraced with no foul play taking place. As Cena was leaving the ring, to his shock, Brock Lesnar had returned after two years. Lesnar would pummel Cena with his signature F5.
Bizarrely, Cena wouldn't face Lesnar at the next PLE, Clash in Paris. Instead, we were treated to John Cena vs. Logan Paul. On the 8 August episode of SmackDown, after turning face the previous week, Cena reflected over his career and subsequently issued an open challenge, which was answered by Paul. After an exchange of words, Cena wanted to face Paul on that night's episode, which Paul refused, instead challenging Cena to a match at Clash in Paris, which Cena accepted.
Cena successfully defeated Logan Paul. What made the win more sweet and memorable was that he performed and won the match with his wife, Shay Shariatzadeh, being in the front row to see it.
Brock Lesnar would return in September when he interfered in Cena's match against Sami Zayn, causing the match to end in a no-contest and attacked Cena once again. Following the attack, Lesnar called Cena a "bitch" and stated that he would see Cena at Wrestlepalooza.
This was WWE's first main roster event to be livestreamed on ESPN's direct-to-consumer streaming service for viewers in the United States, following the expiration of WWE's contract with Peacock for these events the prior month.
Their match was a squash one as Lesnar would crush Cena to win the match easily.
In a promo prior to his match at Clash in Paris, John Cena listed wrestlers he wanted to face before his retirement from in-ring competition at the end of 2025, which included former rival, AJ Styles. Following his loss at Wrestlepalooza, Cena posted on X about having a match against Styles, which Styles responded, saying he wanted the match as well.
Triple H subsequently confirmed a match between them for Crown Jewel. According to Fightful Select, the match was built over social media because Cena had no scheduled TV dates before Crown Jewel.
The match was evenly contested with each staking a claim to win the match. What made this match one to remember was Cena playing homage to both past and present wrestlers by using their finishing moves. Cena won the match by using the Tombstone Piledriver and then the Attitude Adjustment.
Cena would engage in a small feud with Dominik Mysterio. Up until that point, Cena hadn't won the Intercontinental Championship in his illustrious career. That ended when Raw came to Cena's hometown of Boston. Cena would beat Mysterio to become a Grand Slam champion. They would have the rematch at Survivor Series. Mysterio regained the title after a myriad of intereferences by his stable-mates.
John Cena's final opponent would be identified by way of the Last Time is Now Tournament. This was ultimately won by Gunther. The two would face-off at Saturday Night's Main Event XLII (42).
There were rumours swirling around that WWE Hall of Famer, Edge, might be his final opponent but alas, that didn't occur. He didn't even participate in the tournament.
Sadly, after a tough contest, Gunther would make Cena tap out to the Sleeper hold. After the main event, the crowd applauded Cena and cheered him with various chants such as "Thank You, Cena!" before several WWE officials, current and retired wrestlers, and referees came out and surrounded the ring, which included talents from Raw, Smackdown and NXT.
Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes and World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk then presented Cena with both of their championship belts for him to lift as a gesture to the crowd. WWE's Chief Content Officer Triple H, who notably got a chorus of boos from the audience, then showed Cena a video package highlighting his career as a professional wrestler, with "I Lived" by American pop rock band OneRepublic being played in the background.
After taking a few bows, Cena then removed his sneakers and armbands he used during the match and placed them in the center of the ring, before leaving to give one final salute on the stage as the show went off the air.
I must admit, apart from the heel turn, everything that happened was rather predictable. There were exciting parts such as the heel turn act and when Brock Lesnar returned. What shocked me though was that Cena originally wanted to do 200 dates but WWE turned that down and instead went with 36.
I believe that WWE should've given the WWE Universe as much of John Cena as possible. The reasoning is simple. It's unknown when we'll see John Cena again in the wrestling world. People will obviously see him in movies and possibly TV shows.
He also explained why the match with Brock Lesnar was a squash one. It was to build momentum for the latter. I believe this speaks volumes of who John Cena is.
John Cena has been building up this kind of behaviour for the past few years. For the past few years, he has only appeared 2 -5 times a year and wrestled once among those appearances.
Until the next time, have a good retirement.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME: The never seen seventeen, the last real champion, John Cena!"
- The full introduction used by Mark Nash