“It’s like the last page in a 500-page book. All of us would really have to f**k it up for that last page to ruin the 499.” – John Cena
“Ehhh, there’s a way.” – Triple H
It’s hard to overstate how incredible John Cena’s run was as WWE’s top guy. Not only did he last longer as WWE’s top guy than Hulk Hogan, but he did so while appearing and wrestling on TV nearly every week. He even wrestled more house shows just from 2005 to 2015 than the Hulkster did his entire career, and without exploiting the international date line.
With that kind of overexposure, Cena was bound to face fan backlash. For years, many fans, typically older males, booed him, chanted that he sucked, and sometimes threatened violence. In whole swathes of the county, the haters outnumbered the supporters.
Most promotions would have turned Cena heel, but his merchandise sales were so strong, it didn’t matter how he was received on TV broadcasts.
When Cena wouldn’t turn heel even against The Rock, fans realized he never would.
And over the years, the hatred has subsided. Between his 650 Make-A-Wish appearances, his numerous comebacks from injury, and his US Title Open Challenges, fans couldn’t help but grow to respect him.
Or maybe it was the simple fact that the Cena haters grew out of trying to make Cena kids cry.
The point was, the time to turn Cena to the bad side had long since passed. John Cena finally turning heel in 2025 would be like Tammy Sytch finally doing a porno in 2016.
So when Cena announced his retirement for the end of 2025, he had the goodwill of the whole WWE Universe (as it was known in his heyday). The Last Time is Now tour, as it would be called, would see John make 36 more appearances before hanging it up for good.
WWE’s most hardcore fans (i.e. those willing to pay thousand dollars to attend Raw’s Netflix premiere) cheered at the idea of him winning the Royal Rumble and then his 17th world title.
When that didn’t pan out, he got cheered making CM Punk pass out at Elimination Chamber and punched his ticket to WrestleMania that way.
WWE Champion and Mania opponent Cody Rhodes congratulated Cena in the ring…
…but the celebration was crashed by The Rock and, for some reason, rapper Travis Scott. The “Final Boss” and TKO board member had seemingly made nice with Cody Rhodes until demanding Cody’s “soul” a week earlier.
Rather than turn heel and do The Rock’s bidding, Cody Rhodes told him, in so many words, to go f**k himself (“Hey Rock, go f**k yourself!”).
As Cody and his challenger embraced, The Rock signaled to John with a throat-slitting motion, flipping Cena’s switch to evil. With a kick to Cody’s nuts, Cena finally turned heel.
And just to make sure everyone understood, he busted Cody open with a Rolex, choked him with his own necktie…
…and held him down for The Rock to whip.
Everyone was shocked. Michael Cole said the s-word. No one expected John Cena to turn heel this late in his career.
But something still felt hollow. When Hulk Hogan turned heel, fans pelted the ring with garbage. When John Cena turned heel, fans reacted with a giant OMG. What a moment this was!
Indeed, it was a big moment that popped people of a certain age, and it made headlines—but so did that year’s Super Bowl commercials, and most of those sucked and were quickly forgotten. In this case, Rock & Cena were Meg Ryan & Billy Crystal eating Hellmann’s, and Travis Scott was Sidney Sweeney thrown in at random for the younger demo.
…
WWE had its viewers hooked with a shocking stunt, but to elevate it beyond a mere stunt, they would have to follow through with a great storyline. Instead, John Cena showed up and did what felt like an SNL sketch about his retirement. Ha! John Cena gets fed up being a hero and tells us how he “really” feels. Good bit.
But he was supposed to be serious. Serious when he whined that fans never cared about his feelings.
Serious when he singled out some pudgy kid in all Cena gear, complete with a camera shot of the kid looking bewildered.
Serious when he told us how sick he was of that Invisible Cena meme.
And because he hated the fans, he was going to RUIN WRESTLING.
It wasn’t until the Smackdown before WrestleMania that Cena would explain his attack on Cody Rhodes: When Cody rejected The Rock, Cena knew Rhodes was too worried about the fans and therefore would lose at Mania. So he kicked him in the nuts.
“To be a winner, you have to sever ties with the losers in your life”, said Cena, pointing to the fans. This might have been more convincing had he not won 16 world titles as a babyface.
Later, Cena would claim he attacked Rhodes so that, six weeks ahead of their match, Cody would know he was unpredictable. Wrap your head around that one.
But Cena never addressed selling out to The Rock. Clearly, he and Dwayne Johnson were in cahoots. Were fans just supposed to forget The Rock’s hand signal, the activation of Sleeper Cell Cena, and the pre-meditated beatdown?
Yes, yes they were. See, The Rock backed out of the program early on, so the obvious and straightforward angle—a desperate Cena aligning with The Final Boss to win one last world title—wouldn’t work. And nowhere was this more apparent than at WrestleMania.
…
At WWE’s biggest show of the year, John Cena and Cody Rhodes were in the midst of a ho-hum match when somebody’s entrance music hit.
So it wasn’t a hallucination! thought the fans. Cena really had sold out to The Rock. But they slowly realized that this was not The Rock’s music, and that the Final Boss wouldn’t be showing up at all.
Instead, it was Travis Scott holding a phony Hardcore title with the same aura as any other fan wearing a replica belt to a show.
And Cena laughed because, now that Travis Scott was here, he had this match in the bag.
It was possibly the dumbest run-in in wrestling history, if “run” is even the right word—it took Travis Scott nearly two minutes just to reach the ring, during which time the action came to a complete stand-still. In that time, Cena could have hit Rhodes with a dozen more Attitude Adjustments.
So this was Cena’s plan? This was why he turned on the fans after twenty years? So that The Rock’s rapper friend could maybe slap Cody?
After this interference failed, Scott did manage to break up a pinfall for Cena, leading to a confrontation with Cody Rhodes. In the middle of the ring, during the main event of WrestleMania, the champion and a non-athlete had a staredown. The eyes of thousands of fans were on…
…their phones, trying to get clips for social media. Headlines, baby!
After John Cena attempted to cheap-shot Cody with the WWE title belt, Rhodes turned the tables. With Cena cowering and feigning remorse, Cody agonized over hitting Cena with a foreign object.
Cody’s dad would have done it. Hulk Hogan would have done it. Hell, John Cena would have done it. But instead, Cody solidified his claim as the new dumbest man in pro wrestling by putting the belt down.
Immediately, Cena kicked Cody in the nuts, then hit him with the belt and pinned him.
In response to this farcical finish, the critical Michael Cole did an instant 180 and praised Cena as the undisputed greatest of all time. WWE viewers might have just seen John Cena the character win in the most shameful way possible, but the mainstream media needed to hear (and repeat) that John Cena the performer was the GOAT.
Just as we’d seen when Roman Reigns ducked and cheated his way through an historically long title run, the wrestlers told one story in the ring, while the announcers told a completely different one on commentary.
And so John Cena posed with his record-breaking 17th world title…
…alongside Travis Scott, for no reason but to steal a few more headlines and boost sales of his custom belt…
…a polished, commercial-ready version of something gritty. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
…
The Raw after WrestleMania, historically the night when fans “hijack” the show, saw Cena enter to a mixed but largely positive reaction. On this night, the fans played along with John’s bitter ex-girlfriend act and chanted, “We are sorry!”…
…which Cena spun as “We AREN’T sorry”. In the background, a fan who sold his kidney for a seat on camera desperately signaled, No! You misunderstand, my lord!
Nevertheless, Cena persisted. Actually, you guys are sorry. Sorry excuses for human beings!
John did get one thing right in his first promo as champion: The smattering of boos he got that night were nothing compared to the hateful reactions he used to get as a babyface. But if that was the case, why turn him heel in the first place?
Simply put, fans weren’t buying Cena’s heel turn, and who could blame them? John Cena’s stated reasons for turning heel were silly and unconvincing, as were his heel tactics. Cena may have started out busting open and strangling Cody…
…but for the months afterward, John’s villainy consisted mostly of grumpy promosscolding the fans. It was like a cartoon adaptation of an R-rated movie.
Moreover, he was still basically the same character with the same presentation. Cena might have replaced his Titantron graphics with a simple chyron, but he still used the same theme music and wore the same dorky style of merchandise.
In fact, Cena had thirty-six new sets of merchandise, with a unique outfit for fans in each city to buy, usually patterned after the local sports team. The supposed heel Cena kept wearing slogans like “Rise Above Hate” and “Never Give Up”.
Sure, he’d wear the WWE belt backwards, but this was just a ploy to highlight his region-specific towels for sale at the merch table and on WWE Shop.
Money talked, and Heel John Cena walked.
…
WWE didn’t exactly break new ground when they booked John Cena’s first title defense, either. At Backlash, Cena would wrestle Randy Orton one-on-one in front of cameras for the 23rd time. This time, Mr. Sourpuss promised to not only ruin wrestling but kill the fans’ childhood by depriving them of additional Cena-Orton matches.
Leading to the match, Orton sent in an impostor to sneak up on Cena and take an AA. Despite having wrestled Orton hundreds of times, and despite the impostor being fifty pounds lighter, John didn’t notice anything amiss. This allowed the real Randy to surprise Cena with an RKO seconds later.
Ostensibly a babyface, Orton didn’t bother to check on his fallen henchman. In fairness, it was Shawn Spears, so I wouldn’t have, either.
Orton and Cena’s 23rd match was just like all their others, but with one key difference: They promoted two beverage brands simultaneously.
Of course, a lot of fans cheered Orton and booed Cena, but that happened the first 22 times, as well.
After the match, John Cena tried recording an ASMR video but ended up giving R-Truth a very neat and orderly AA.
This led to a match at Saturday Night’s Main Event, where Truth wore “old-school Cena gear” that was indistinguishable from John’s current merchandise.
Likewise, R-Truth wrestled as “the Good John Cena”, using all of Cena’s old-school offense like the shoulder tackle, the Five-Knuckle Shuffle, the STF, and the AA…
…all of which the Bad John Cena continued to use, too.
After five minutes, the Bad John Cena beat the Good John Cena with his one unique move, the kick to the nuts.
Shortly thereafter, WWE low-balled Truth on his upcoming contract. On social media, Truth announced he had been released, sparking fan backlash…
…though as Paul Levesque would later clarify, R-Truth was never actually “fired”.
…
So anyway, R-Truth was fired, and John Cena’s next match saw him team with Logan Paul against Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso.
Just as he did with that Fred kid, Cena would cross-promote with a popular but obnoxious YouTuber. A lot of fans resented the pairing of Cena with Logan Paul because he’s a douchebag, but they couldn’t deny his athletic talent. Paul does lots of high-risk moves that, if done right, look spectacular…
…and if done wrong, could seriously injure him. What’s not to like?
Cena cheated his way to near-victory when a masked man cloaked in black ran in and assaulted him. It was—you guessed it—Shawn Spears!
Or better yet, R-Truth, whose departure WWE had handled so poorly that they had to bring him back.
Now competing under his real name and eschewing his goofball persona, Ron Killings faced Cena in a non-title grudge match on Smackdown. The 53-year-old Killings hadn’t gotten any younger since their match four weeks earlier (in fact, he was four weeks older)…
…so the match was another quickie, ending when Cena got himself DQ’d in six minutes. Killings reverted to his clown gimmick and disappeared shortly thereafter…
…with nothing to show for his much-hyped return but a fat new contract and a super-easy schedule.
Cena would paint this mini-feud as a brilliant diversion, allowing him to kill time before he retired with the WWE title. At the end of the year, Cena planned to go home the “last real champion”, forever depriving fans of the “real” WWE championship (which had already been vacated a dozen times).
But before he got home, he had 19 dates.
…
Enter CM Punk, who challenged Cena to a match any time, anywhere. John, clever imp that he was, picked Night of Champions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
John Cena would deliver his own version of the famous “Pipebomb” promo, but with the roles reversed and Slim Jim logos on the table. Often reciting the original speech word for word, Cena called Punk a sell-out and got cheered.
The next week, Punk showed up as a parody of Thuganomics-era John Cena. John stole his Pipebomb, Punk thought, so he’d steal John’s raps. But if the hip-hop get-up and rhythmless flow weren’t embarrassing enough (Punk ran his bars together and rhymed, “ass-kiss” with “class”)…
…Punk did it all on the exact kind of “Saudi blood money” show he’d razzed the Miz for in 2020. (This hypocrisy was a plot point)
And while CM Punk debased himself with the most humiliating segment of his own career, Cena stood there stewing like he was the one who looked stupid.
At Night of Champions, an errant shoulder tackle knocked the referee out of the ring…
…where he remained for EIGHT MINUTES, sleeping through pyro, three entrance themes, and interference from five men. In the end, Seth stomped Punk but failed to cash in his MITB contract, while John Cena capitalized with a pinfall.
With this second title defense in the books, Cena was that much closer to stealing the WWE title forever…
…unless WWE had a wrestler “pin” an invisible opponent and claim it was John Cena.
…
It was now July, and Cena was only getting less believable as a heel.
Sure, Cena was slightly more egotistical, making the ring announcer glowingly praise him every night, but fans had already heard Michael Cole do that at WrestleMania.
And besides boring the crowd with constant therapist-speak, John Cena didn’t do anything truly dastardly.
Fans popped for his theme music and chanted “This is awesome” at his matches, regardless of their quality. The “Let’s Go Cena” side was consistently winning the “Let’s Go Cena/Cena Sucks” chant duel.
After Hulk Hogan turned heel, fans either hated him or bought into his new black-and-white Hollywood attitude. There weren’t Hulkamaniacs still dressed in yellow and red and cheering on Hogan as if he’d never turned.
But after Cena turned heel, Cena fans by and large stayed Cena fans because they knew it was just a phase; the man had just months left in his career, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to retire as a heel.
Cena finally seemed to connect as a heel when he turned his therapy talk inward. Trying to weasel out of his SummerSlam match with Cody Rhodes, Cena cited emotional exhaustion from a movie shoot. His over-the-top insincere apologies got him way more heat than his lame insincere insults.
Cody put Cena through a table to a big pop, then forged John’s signature using his unconscious opponent’s own hand (legal in wrestling law). That’s when Cody dropped the biggest bombshell: according to the fine print (in a contract Cena refused to sign anyway), this match would be a street fight.
At last WWE had found a way to make sure no one cheered Cena, but it was too little, too late. With only 13 dates left on his contract and just days before the second-biggest show of the year, WWE abandoned its angle of the decade and turned Cena face.
A last-minute heel turn wasn’t unheard-of, but a last-minute face turn vs. another babyface may have been unprecedented. The Cena heel run was so bad, WWE hot-shotted an angle to kill off their main feud.
In his Jets-themed gear (Giants gear was for Sunday), Cena did a U-turn for the ages, doing everything but apologize to that pudgy kid from Brussels…
Cena confessed he was insecure about being forgotten, hence wanting to retire with the title. Ironically, his heel run was the most forgettable thing he’d done in his whole career. He also said he was a fool to listen to a certain someone who convinced him to turn heel just to make headlines.
But now the moment had passed, and no one cared. [Damn, John. Why didn’t you just write this induction for me?] So now it was time to write some better headlines, like “Bullshit over, announces WWE’s Cena”.
…
At SummerSlam, fans still chanted “John Cena sucks” to his music, but affectionately so. He still had the ring announcer glaze him on the mic, but now it was cute.
Demonstrating just how haphazardly this angle was booked, Cena’s first match as a babyface was a street fight. This meant Cena got more violent than he’d been since his heel turn.
I suppose in the original plan, he hit Cody with Tyrese Halliburton’s crutch without permission.
But it wasn’t just weapons in John’s offense; Cena also threw in some shoulder tackles and a side slam.
“A little bit of the Cena of old coming through”, noted Cole, forgetting that Cena had done those same moves as recently as one match ago.
The SummerSlam match was so ridiculously superior to their WrestleMania match that you wondered why they didn’t just do it at Mania to begin with.
In the end, Cody Rhodes won the title back, but Cena earned something even better: another program with Brock Lesnar.
After the match, the Beast Incarnate returned after two years, the time it took his allegations had to blow over. Those allegations, for the record, were that he accepted sex with a trafficked woman as a signing bonus, and the only reason he wasn’t in more trouble was that he’d been too drunk to actually follow through. Allegedly.
…
But first, Cena would work with Logan Paul. Again. But as opponents now. At least Paul, at age 29, was over a decade younger than Cena’s average opponent in The Last Time is Now tour.
Cena accused Logan of stealing opportunities from the likes of Dominik Mysterio, AJ Styles, Seth Rollins, the Usos, and Jacob Fatu. Sure enough, only the first two would get to wrestle Cena one-on-one.
As for Logan Paul, he would use up four more Cena appearances as part of their feud, including a nut-shot finish to a tag match…
…followed by an even bigger low blow when Cena said fans really wanted to root for Logan…
…and culminating in a Cena victory at Clash in Paris (which for some reason used Van Gogh’s Starry Night as its graphical theme). For the first time, a Paul brother had squared off with a past-his-prime athlete and lost.
Speaking of using up Cena’s scarce appearances, it was time for Cena to face Brock Lesnar, a man he confessed he’d never have chosen if it were up to him (either because Brock was too tough, because they’d already wrestled so many times, or because he allegedly dabbled in the flesh trade).
But it wasn’t up to him, no matter what the boss told the gullible press. In fact, Cena didn’t pick any of his opponents, as the ultimate company man would later admit.
And so, even though Cena didn’t want it, and even though Lesnar absolutely didn’t need it, the two met at Wrestlepalooza. Brock proceeded to absolutely demolish Cena, just as he’d done eleven years earlier…
…but with no prospect of a redemptive rematch. It wasn’t new or shocking or entertaining, but at least it put frowns on people’s faces.
…
Cena now had just five dates remaining on his farewell tour.
First, he defeated AJ Styles in a match described as a “love letter to wrestling” (in the same way that his rematch with Cody was an apology letter for WrestleMania)…
…then he came home for his last appearance in Boston.
Naturally, Paul Levesque opened that show. Paul Levesque opened everything now, even narrating the “Then. Now. Forever.” video that began every WWE broadcast.
But how else would the Boston fans know to cheer Cena when his theme music hit?
Cena talked about coming home, only to be interrupted by Dominik Mysterio, and the two ended up challenging each other to a match for the IC title. Paul Levesque, who never left the ring, made it official.
After some premature celebrations..
…Cena won the title for real, making him a double Grand Slam champion, the Fernando Tatís of wrestling. With the IC title, Cena had won every major title in WWE.
The next week, Cena appeared on Raw again (with a recap also opened by Triple H), where he won an impromptu six-man match against the Judgment Day. Rey Mysterio and Sheamus lent John a hand with a Fifteen-Knuckle Shuffle. Uh, this move:
And at Survivor Series, Cena did the time-honored tradition and dropped the IC title back to Dom, thanks to some Liv Morgan shenanigans.
…
At long last, it all came down to December 13th: Tay-Tay’s birthday. But more importantly for the matter at hand, John Cena’s Final Match.
What should have been a huge audience of current viewers, lapsed fans, and the Cena-curious was instead limited to Peacock subscribers. Thanks in part to a big ratings dip for the July edition, booked kamikaze-style against AEW All In, the network relegated Saturday Night’s Main Event to its streaming site.
While NBC aired re-runs of The Wall and Dateline, Peacock streamed John Cena’s Final Match. His opponent the “Last Time is Now” tournament-winner, Gunther, who’d beaten out fifteen other men who didn’t get to face Cena.
But to fit all those potential matches in, WWE would’ve had to book a new wrestler against Cena every week! Can you imagine?
The night was full of Attitude Adjustments, but also quite a few FUs, starting with one for Stu the camera man.
All throughout The Last Time is Now, and the latter days of his career in general, John Cena talked to Stu before Stu tracked his dash to the ring. On this night, though, John wanted to put the spotlight on Stu himself, who was always too busy capturing the superstars to get any glory himself. So in a bit of role reversal, John Cena took over the camera to give Stu his moment.
The director immediately cut away to a wide shot of Cena that obscured Stu’s face.
Then there was the match’s finish.
With Gunther choking the life out of Cena, fans chanted “Don’t give up!” The referee dropped John’s arm twice, giving the lifeless Cena one last chance to regain consciousness. MMA, this was not.
Sure enough, Cena didn’t give up, flashing his Cenation sign and rising to his feet. But Gunther hammered away at him and put him right back in the sleeper.
This time, Cena simply smiled—he’d just remembered a trick he hadn’t pulled off in 20 years to instantly escape a submission hold:
He tapped out.
After two decades without submitting, Cena chose to quit and live to fight another day (except it was his last match, so there would be no other fights on other days).
The fans, each of whom paid hundreds or even thousands of dollars and endured a year of nonsense to see John Cena win, fell silent.
Not only had Cena lost, he’d broken his own credo to do it. Hulk Hogan had his Four Demandments, but John Cena had just one: Never Give Up.
…
After the feature presentation (shots of fans looking stunned), Cena took a bow and received a standing ovation. But to really lift the crowd’s spirits, there was just one man to do it: Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
The applause for Cena quickly turned to boos for Hunter, who led a parade of well-wishers.
Cody and CM Punk greeted Cena in the ring and let him pose one last time with both world titles (one of them undisputed, somehow)…
…before Triple H stepped onto the apron to another chorus of boos. Thanks to WWE Unreal and the credits that ended each WWE broadcast, fans knew exactly whom to blame for the finish…
…and here he was with a big old grin on his face, as if disappointing his audience made him a genius.
The beet-red boss turned Cena’s attention to a video tribute showcasing John’s childhood days putting his brother in submission holds…
…his illustrious wrestling career, and his colleagues’ respect for him. All that was left was to leave his wrestling shoes in the ring.
At the post-show panel, Triple H did what every great booker does after a great angle: go out and convince viewers they were wrong, and that it didn’t suck.
Thousands of fans stuck around in the cold DC night to give Hunter a piece of their mind—the piece responsible for chanting “You f**ked up”, to be exact. Did they not realize it was a new era?
“I’m actually mildly disappointed”, quipped Triple H, totally not mad. “I thought it would be so much louder”. It got so much louder.
A somber Joe Tessitore called Cena’s loss part of the circle of life, and that WWE is just like life (full of disappointment and occasional inexplicable failures)…
…and Levesque, speaking over boos, patronized the fans who’d understand one day about the time honored tradition that’s best for business, etc.
Triple H somehow wound up the most insufferable guy on a panel with Peter Rosenberg.
If Cena’s heel turn stood in stark contrast to Hulk Hogan’s, so too did his retirement stand in stark contrast to Sting’s. Less than two years earlier, The Icon had retired in AEW, winning a match so well-received, even Pat McAfee shouted it out on Raw.
There were lots of other ways to put Gunther over without killing off the Cena character and turning WWE’s most loyal fans against it. He could have made Cena pass out, or he could have made him tap out in any other match besides his last one.
As for whether it was best for business, we’ll have to wait and see not only how Gunther’s career turns out, but also how fans treat the next big retirement show. No one’s going to shell out a grand to see their favorite star lose one last time. And who knows how many Cena fans, young and old, would be turned off WWE forever?
…
John Cena’s retirement run will go down as one of the biggest fumbles in wrestling history. Spectacle trumped storytelling. Reinvention devolved into self-parody. Fans booed to the booker, not the heel. And did I mention it sucked?
So much went wrong with The Last Time is Now tour (Travis Scott, the heel run, the WrestleMania match, the R-Truth fiasco, Punk in Saudi Arabia, the finish to the Gunther match) that we could have made this year’s Gooker Award voting an all-Cena affair. Instead, we bundled them together (except the Punk one) just to give some other crap a shout-out. But to the surprise of no one, Cena’s whole farewell tour ran away with it.
And while WWE’s final page for Cena didn’t quite ruin the rest of the book…
…you can’t say they didn’t try!