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John Cena, who is often considered one of the biggest names in the history of professional wrestling, recently retired from in ring action and had his final match on Saturday at the Saturday Night's Main Event. The former two times WWE World Heavyweight Champion Gunther was his farewell opponent at the mentioned event.
John Cena embarked on a retirement tour throughout 2025, during which he faced multiple opponents. The first major opponent he encountered was Cody Rhodes. After winning the Undisputed WWE Championship, he encountered some of his biggest rivals of the past, like Randy Orton and CM Punk. He kept on having big matches even after dropping the Championship at SummerSlam.
John Cena talked about his retirement tour opponents
His matches with Logan Paul, Brock Lesnar, and AJ Styles remain the most important matches of his retirement tour. Especially his match with AJ Styles, which is considered one of the best matches in the history of professional wrestling. But did he choose his opponents himself? Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on the Insight Podcast, he revealed the following;
“Only thing I wanted to do, the only idea I gave was about Saturday Night’s Main Event on the 13th, saying it should not be a John Cena show. If everybody’s saying you’re going out on your own terms, which is BS, because I want to do it forever. Okay, you have an idea of this is how I want John to go out. You do.
John Cena had a retirement tour throughout 2025
"I have an idea of how I want to go out. And how I want to go out is not by folks remembering what I did. I want a chance to perform and do some good. You want to sprinkle in moments and memories to understand and make that last match more meaningful, fine, but let’s use the rest of our two hours and show the future of the business.
“That’s how I want to go out, because when I came in, there was a gold medalist who’s like, I’ll work with the kid. To be on a sold-out show in Chicago and hear that noise, I was already hooked, but that’s it. I want to give NXT kids a chance to be there, and I want to give major WWE superstars a chance to be on the card.
Cena had his retirement match at the Saturday Night's Main Event last Saturday
"It’s a limited thing. It’s not WrestleMania, it’s only limited spots, but that’s how I want to go out. And there’ll be people to criticize that. My theory, or my perspective was, if you do a whole show on John, two things can happen. Too much, not enough. No one’s ever gonna be like, nailed it.”
John Cena also won the WWE Intercontinental Championship by defeating Dominik Mysterio in a recent episode of Monday Night RAW to become a WWE Grand Slam Champion. He dropped the Championship back to Dominik Mysterio at the Survivor Series event. With the end of the career of John Cena, it can be said that this is also the end of a wrestling era.
