John Cena’s retirement tour was stuffed with divisive booking decisions, from his heel turn at Elimination Chamber 2025, to him tapping out, a smile on his face, to GUNTHER’s sleeper hold during his final match at WWE Saturday Night’s Important Event in December. Cena’s final yr was highlighted on season three of Netflix’s “WWE Unreal.” Within the second episode of the show, Cena and Paul “Triple H” Levesque spoke concerning the decisions surrounding that final moment.
“John will need to do what’s best to maneuver the business forward,” Levesque explained. “To lots of us, the right guy for that appeared to be GUNTHER. The guy that can garner probably the most booing from our fan base, almost certainly to find a way to have the sort of match that John will need to have.”
Cena explained he knew GUNTHER was his final opponent before he even wrestled Brock Lesnar at Wrestlepalooza. He admitted that tapping out was certainly one of his first ideas.
“Immediately, when Hunter was like, ‘I’m pondering GUNTHER,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I get to tap out,'” Cena explained. “He’s like, ‘Yeah. You’ll try this?’ I’m like, ‘This is gorgeous. The ‘never quit’ guy gives up.'”
Cena once more explained his philosophy on the match ending, and spoke concerning the “cycle of life” sometimes ending peacefully. He said that is how he wanted the death of his character to go, but acknowledged many fans didn’t understand it.
“This was the primary time a personality was killed off the show,” he explained. “You’ve gotten to make the character’s death further the show. You give them an unpredictable, controversial ending, which is the ending of my story, but not the story.”
For those who use any quotes from this text, please credit “WWE Unreal” and supply a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.