John Cena's retirement tour polarized fans for most of 2025 — and Saturday's grand finale was no exception.
John Cena’s final WWE match — and whole retirement tour, if we’re being completely honest — was as polarizing as it was emotional. Cena’s submission loss to Gunther won’t be soon forgotten and is destined to remain one of the biggest wrestling debates in the coming days, weeks and months. In an industry that thrives on buzz, nothing has or will generate more than how Saturday Night’s Main Event ended in Washington, D.C.
With such a hot-button issue hitting us in the face like a Five-Knuckle Shuffle, the Uncrowned Horsemen called an emergency gathering to discuss all things related to Cena’s final match.
Let’s ride!
1. Where does John Cena’s retirement rank for you? Was it fitting? Would you have done anything differently?
Anthony Sulla-Heffinger: If we’re talking official retirements, Cena has to rank near the top. All due respect to Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XXIV, and Michaels and Undertaker at WrestleMania XXVI, but both "The Nature Boy" and "HBK" wrestled after those matches. I think we’ve seen two incredible retirements over the past two years in Sting in 2024 and now Cena.
Now, despite what the D.C. crowd and a vocal portion of the IWC believes, this was an absolutely fitting end for Cena’s career. If you watched closely, Cena’s smirk right before he tapped out signified that he was at peace with the end. On top of that, if you listened to any of his comments in the weeks and months leading up to Saturday’s match, Cena repeatedly said this was all he had left. Him tapping isn’t as much a sign of him giving up, it’s a message that he’s given us everything possible.
I’m not sure I would have done anything drastically differently, either. When we asked if Gunther was the right person to retire Cena, I said that Gunther needed this. Now that it has come to pass, I believe he did need it and WWE needed it as well. Gunther has nuclear heat now and is instantly the top heel on "Raw," "SmackDown," NXT or wherever. With so many tweeners, a pure bad guy should present WWE with no shortage of options moving forward.
Kel Dansby: I’m a fan of how the final match was handled, even if a surprising number of fans convinced themselves that Cena might win. Cena’s an old-school wrestler at heart, he understands the tradition. You “do the job” on the way out and elevate someone on your final night. Gunther retiring both Goldberg and Cena now gives him one of the most intimidating résumés in modern WWE history.
Could the pageantry have been bigger? Sure. Sting’s farewell run in AEW is a perfect example of how to craft an emotional, celebratory final chapter. But Sting also had the benefit of a tag-match format and Darby Allin throwing himself around like he’s made of rubber. Cena specifically wanted the opposite: No stipulations, no smoke machines, no overproduced spectacle. Just a straight wrestling match.
And that smile on his face right before he tapped told the whole story — he went out exactly the way he wanted.
Drake Riggs: On its own, I struggle to pinpoint where Cena's retirement falls, because it was very good. But I'm not sure it was the best. Obviously Sting's retirement is still fresh and impossible not to mention. Bryan Danielson's unofficial official retirement also stands out, more so for the match than what followed — though, that part overshadowed it in totality.
While Cena's was fitting, the hostile reception toward it is also understandable. Practically the entire man's career personified the "Never Give Up" slogan, so for him to turn his back on it at the very end can easily be seen as character abandonment. That's not necessarily my view, but it is one I can understand.
Realistically, the only thing I would have changed is who Cena went against. Put on the exact same match move for move, I don't care. It would have been better if it were a young talent who needed the push much more than an established name like Gunther.
Robert Jackman: I think they hit the landing strip perfectly on this one. I was very much in Kel’s camp in seeing a Gunther victory as a near certainty — I know we shouldn’t pay attention to wrestling betting markets, but I was surprised when they were almost at 50-50 Saturday morning — but I wouldn’t personally have opted for the submission finish.
WWE laid the sentiment on thick with some video packages, so I was a bit surprised they chose to trample over the whole “Never Give Up” message that Cena has been shilling for 20 years now. Would it have been overkill to have him break out of that sleeper hold one final time, only to end up going down for the three-count in a traditional pinfall? Alternatively, they could have just gone for the “pass out” finish and had Gunther win without Cena actively giving up.
Maybe I’m caught up in the sentiment a bit, but I think that “I said I wouldn’t give up, and I never did” would have been a better message for Cena to ride out into the sunset on.
2. Should these retirement tours become a regular thing in wrestling? Who should get one next?
Dansby: I’m not a fan of turning anything into a formula, especially in wrestling. Not every wrestler deserves a grand farewell. Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania remains the gold standard of WWE retirements, and Cena’s run showed how difficult it is to match that level of storytelling and emotional payoff.
If WWE gives everyone — AJ Styles, Chris Jericho if he returns, or any other longtime veteran — a yearlong retirement arc, it risks becoming cheesy and repetitive. These tours should feel rare, special and earned.
Riggs: Are you kidding me? Considering how that one just played out? Absolutely not!
OK, OK — that's if we're assuming WWE and Triple H booked it again, but I digress. If a retirement tour is going to be replicated, it seems the best fit is a global collaborative effort where an all-time great in-ring technician delivers their final hits with a bunch of names they never did. Dream matches, essentially. Think Danielson vs. Kenny Omega as the perfect example — that match felt like the kind of thing every fan would ideally want to see in a "retirement tour," and effectively was. It just didn't get the label.
Other than that, I'm not sure any stretch within a year specifically, as Cena did, provides enough time to make an overall quality story. Again, though, that's using WWE's poor example.
Jackman: I’m a firm no on the first question. The power of these retirement tours — or even these emotional last matches — is that they’re seldom used. That makes them feel more special at the time, but it also ensures they don’t get repetitive. There are only so many ways you can have a wrestler retire, and it would soon get boring if we were seeing these kinds of swan-song moments every year.
There are other honors you can bestow on legends of the business. Even just giving them a big homecoming match in their twilight years — like Cope and Christian reuniting at AEW All Out in Toronto earlier this year — can go a long way when it’s done well.
Is there anyone else working right now who deserves their own retirement show? I suppose the closest candidate for me would be Rey Mysterio. I could see WWE doing a special Worlds Collide show with AAA in order to give Mysterio the kind of send-off he deserves. Though, of course, that would require Rey to want to retire in the first place, and there’s no sign of that happening soon.
Sulla-Heffinger: I don’t think we should see retirement tours become a regular thing — it puts an unfair level of expectation on the promotion and superstar to deliver something over the top for the duration of an entire year. There are certain men and women who will undoubtedly deserve it, but I think building a specific event or series of events around a farewell is much more effective than a full-blown tour.
As far as who should get one next, AJ Styles immediately comes to mind and Jackman makes a good case for Rey Mysterio, but I’d also argue that when it comes time for Kenny Omega to hang them up, we should see something special.
3. Now that we’re done with it, give Cena’s retirement tour an overall grade.
Jackman: C+. Fundamentally, the fact that he appeared at every single WWE PLE bar one (Cena didn’t work Evolution, for obvious reasons) is to be commended. Obviously the heel turn was a massive mistake in retrospect, but it did at least provide some kind of narrative for those post-WrestleMania months where Cena was appearing regularly.
It also made those big babyface entrances at SummerSlam, Clash in Paris, and Crown Jewel more special when they finally came. If you had Cena doing the emotional stuff all year long, it might have felt a bit samey — not for the live crowds, of course (who would have still bellowed their lungs out for their hero nonetheless), but for all of us watching at home.
Dansby: D+. And that’s me being generous.
Cena’s final year had bright spots — the matches with AJ Styles, Sami Zayn, Cody Rhodes at SummerSlam, and the finale with Gunther all delivered. But the heel turn was botched from day one, the Travis Scott and Rock fiasco derailed months of storytelling, and the babyface turn came out of nowhere. Add in the Brock Lesnar squash and you’re left with one of the most inconsistent, whiplash-inducing final years WWE has ever booked for a legend.
Great matches don’t make up for chaotic storytelling.
Sulla-Heffinger: I’m going to give it a B+ and probably get some heat for it.
It’s hard to separate the turn itself from the overall heel run, but we easily forget how well-executed the Elimination Chamber shocker was. Even if we never hit those highs again, the changes to Cena’s presentation and character were significant enough to warrant kudos. Cena overhauled one of the greatest characters in wrestling history and breathed new life into old feuds in the process.
Cena’s tour hit its stride on SummerSlam weekend, when he turned back to babyface and subsequently gave us two of the greatest matches of his career against Cody Rhodes and Styles. Every moment from SummerSlam on felt like a true blockbuster. By the way, maybe we don’t feel the same way if Cena didn’t turn heel, just saying.
Wrestling is wildly subjective, especially when it comes to a generational star like Cena.
Riggs: C-, and if you want to read why, I'll point you in the direction of the piece I did on the matter.
4. Who was the biggest winner coming out of Saturday Night’s Main Event?
Sulla-Heffinger: It has to be Oba Femi. He stood toe-to-toe with Cody Rhodes on multiple nights, and with the 2026 Royal Rumble just around the corner, it feels like he’s ready to make a major statement during that match and potentially book a trip to WrestleMania.
When "The Ruler" told Rhodes that the future was standing right in front of him, he was not lying in the slightest.
Dansby: NXT, without question.
The youth movement inside NXT right now feels like the 2016 Black and Gold era all over again. Oba Femi already carries himself like a future WrestleMania main-eventer. Je’Von Evans is one of the most dynamic performers in WWE at just age 21. And Sol Ruca is proof of how stacked the women’s division is at the present moment. Ruca hasn’t even held the main NXT Women’s Championship yet, but she was still chosen for one of the night’s most prestigious spots and picked up the lone NXT victory.
Jackman: Oba Femi has to be the single-biggest winner. Even seeing his entrance on “SmackDown” with the live crowd already doing the battle chant was a huge moment. But to have him come out 24 hours later and hold his own against the top champion in WWE? That’s the sort of push that only comes around every 10 years or so.
On a side note, I was downbeat on the cop-out ending to that match. If you’re going to run with a Drew McIntyre interference angle, why not use it to set up Oba Femi getting the win? You could really feel the air go out of the arena the second the referee rang the bell for that DQ finish. It was probably the only mistake we saw all night, but it was a significant one.
Riggs: I won't be a hipster and go outside the crowd, because it was Oba Femi, for all the reasons my fellow Horsemen listed. But I want to shout out Gunther. Although I don't think the win itself is as much of a booster as it could be, depending on his direction in 2026, playing off the fact that he made Cena tap out can be easily used whenever he wants. At the same time, it really helps wipe away any last remnants of the memory that he tapped out against Jey Uso at WrestleMania. Apologies for the reminder.
Category: General Sports
