Tonight, December 13, 2025, will mark the final appearance of John Cena as an in-ring competitor.
After he completes his Saturday Night’s Main Event match against Gunther, his run as a performer will be complete.
The fact that his last match will air exclusively on the Peacock streaming service in the U.S. (and on YouTube internationally) is an appropriate footnote that speaks to the business’s transformation during Cena’s long, wildly successful run.
Cena has achieved innumerable milestones during his career, including a (canonical) record 17 world championship reigns. He has been loved, hated, and, ultimately, loved again. He has been vociferously cheered and lustily booed—perhaps uniquely so, often at the same time.
That long road ends tonight, with Cena still relatively young, still in good health, and still popular. As he has hinted, this, too, is unique.
Professional wrestling has long been associated with retirements that don’t quite stick. Even high-profile, perfect send-offs like the ones that men like Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels received at WrestleMania aren’t permanent once the “itch” returns, creditors come calling, or Saudi Arabia backs up a truckful of oil money to your front door.
A wrestler still in his 40s (hardly ancient by pro wrestling standards) vowing that he’s about to have his last match inevitably receives a healthy and justified measure of skepticism from wrestling fans who have seen this play out hundreds of times before, only to have the competitor in question come back for a “special appearance” or a final nostalgia run.
Cena seems different. When he says that this will be permanent, I believe him.
And that makes me reflect on a piece I wrote in the early days of this blog, titled “The Company Man.” It’s still the most-read post in the history of this blog. The piece ran in 2012, when a significant portion of the WWE audience despised Cena, even though he was positioned solidly as both a “good guy” and as the company’s main attraction. There, I said:
He is, by all relevant accounts, the genuine article. He perpetually adheres to his onscreen principles, even in—especially in—the face of adversity. Off-screen, he moves more merchandise than anyone else. He has never had a wellness issue or a run-in with law enforcement. He is a dedicated supporter of the military and various charities. He relishes the opportunity to be a role model. By any objective measure, he is a massive success.
Still, they boo.
I made the point that, by 2012, the “Super Cena” criticism of him as a perpetual winner was unfounded and had been for some time. Yet, they booed him. They booed him because he represented a “corny” character, consistent with the less-edgy creative direction that the company took several years earlier.
I concluded the piece by saying:
There will come a time some indeterminate number of years from now when John Cena’s departure from wrestling won’t be temporary. Part of me believes that only Cena’s eventual retirement will be enough to make his most strident critics respect his contributions to the business, even if they didn’t happen to like the presentation of his character.
Whenever that day comes, I think the perspective necessary to appreciate John Cena fully will come with it. People will realize that he was right about a great many things. They’ll understand the significance of the fact that the first item he addressed when he arrived at the WrestleMania 28 press conference podium was the Make-a-Wish pizza party he was hosting that weekend.
Maybe Cena is the flipside of “Superstar” Billy Graham. Perhaps Cena’s career retrospective could be titled “Twenty Years Too Late.” Even if he is, and even if he was, his critics may someday realize that the character Hulk Hogan portrayed so adeptly was little more than who John Cena is in real life. They might realize all of this.
And then they’ll miss him.
Now, we’re here.
Happily, I think Cena’s intermittent absences from WWE since I wrote that piece have, indeed, made the WWE fanbase’s collective heart grow fonder. The teenage and 20-something male demographic that largely led the anti-Cena sentiment of the late 2000s and early 2010s has also gained perspective and perhaps mellowed with age. Cena not being “cool” or “edgy” enough for them when they were 17 or 21 or 25 doesn’t matter anymore. Meanwhile, the children who cheered Cena back then never stopped.
Over the past half-decade or so, Cena has enjoyed fan reaction that is as increasingly positive as his appearances are increasingly infrequent. Thankfully, a combination of time, perspective, evolving business sensibilities, and the receding of anger over the pivot away from “Attitude” has allowed the audience to fully appreciate Cena in the way he deserves.
Cena is perhaps the last true wrestling hero in the mold of the performers and characters who helped define and elevate wrestling for decades.1 Cena obviously isn’t the last great wrestler in the technical sense. There is a greater number of athletically gifted performers in the business now than there have ever been, and Cena would be the first to admit that that was never his strong suit.
Rather, he may be the last great believer—the rare top guy who treated wrestling not like a job, not even like a profession, but like a responsibility. An obligation to himself, to his company, and to the public.
He was the standard-bearer for the WWE through an era that insisted on irony, and he did it without irony himself: showing up, taking the heat, taking the losses when asked, and never once blinking on the values he sold to kids—even when “smart” teens and young adults mocked those same “corny” values.
In a business whose history is rooted in the con, he was the real thing—and the older we get, the more we understand how uncommon that is. When the bell rings tonight, it won’t just be the end of a career; it’ll be the end of a particular kind of trust.
As the business continues down a road of erasing the lines between on-screen and off-screen “reality,” Cena is the last performer to come from an era before those lines were fully blurred who also lived up to the unrelenting “good guy” character he portrayed.
Put more bluntly: the last time is now.
I miss him already.
______________________________
The Axis of Ego 
The Company Man, Revisited
Tonight, December 13, 2025, will mark the final appearance of John Cena as an in-ring competitor.
After he completes his Saturday Night’s Main Event match against Gunther, his run as a performer will be complete.
The fact that his last match will air exclusively on the Peacock streaming service in the U.S. (and on YouTube internationally) is an appropriate footnote that speaks to the business’s transformation during Cena’s long, wildly successful run.
Cena has achieved innumerable milestones during his career, including a (canonical) record 17 world championship reigns. He has been loved, hated, and, ultimately, loved again. He has been vociferously cheered and lustily booed—perhaps uniquely so, often at the same time.
That long road ends tonight, with Cena still relatively young, still in good health, and still popular. As he has hinted, this, too, is unique.
Professional wrestling has long been associated with retirements that don’t quite stick. Even high-profile, perfect send-offs like the ones that men like Ric Flair or Shawn Michaels received at WrestleMania aren’t permanent once the “itch” returns, creditors come calling, or Saudi Arabia backs up a truckful of oil money to your front door.
A wrestler still in his 40s (hardly ancient by pro wrestling standards) vowing that he’s about to have his last match inevitably receives a healthy and justified measure of skepticism from wrestling fans who have seen this play out hundreds of times before, only to have the competitor in question come back for a “special appearance” or a final nostalgia run.
Cena seems different. When he says that this will be permanent, I believe him.
And that makes me reflect on a piece I wrote in the early days of this blog, titled “The Company Man.” It’s still the most-read post in the history of this blog. The piece ran in 2012, when a significant portion of the WWE audience despised Cena, even though he was positioned solidly as both a “good guy” and as the company’s main attraction. There, I said:
I made the point that, by 2012, the “Super Cena” criticism of him as a perpetual winner was unfounded and had been for some time. Yet, they booed him. They booed him because he represented a “corny” character, consistent with the less-edgy creative direction that the company took several years earlier.
I concluded the piece by saying:
Now, we’re here.
Happily, I think Cena’s intermittent absences from WWE since I wrote that piece have, indeed, made the WWE fanbase’s collective heart grow fonder. The teenage and 20-something male demographic that largely led the anti-Cena sentiment of the late 2000s and early 2010s has also gained perspective and perhaps mellowed with age. Cena not being “cool” or “edgy” enough for them when they were 17 or 21 or 25 doesn’t matter anymore. Meanwhile, the children who cheered Cena back then never stopped.
Over the past half-decade or so, Cena has enjoyed fan reaction that is as increasingly positive as his appearances are increasingly infrequent. Thankfully, a combination of time, perspective, evolving business sensibilities, and the receding of anger over the pivot away from “Attitude” has allowed the audience to fully appreciate Cena in the way he deserves.
Cena is perhaps the last true wrestling hero in the mold of the performers and characters who helped define and elevate wrestling for decades.1 Cena obviously isn’t the last great wrestler in the technical sense. There is a greater number of athletically gifted performers in the business now than there have ever been, and Cena would be the first to admit that that was never his strong suit.
Rather, he may be the last great believer—the rare top guy who treated wrestling not like a job, not even like a profession, but like a responsibility. An obligation to himself, to his company, and to the public.
He was the standard-bearer for the WWE through an era that insisted on irony, and he did it without irony himself: showing up, taking the heat, taking the losses when asked, and never once blinking on the values he sold to kids—even when “smart” teens and young adults mocked those same “corny” values.
In a business whose history is rooted in the con, he was the real thing—and the older we get, the more we understand how uncommon that is. When the bell rings tonight, it won’t just be the end of a career; it’ll be the end of a particular kind of trust.
As the business continues down a road of erasing the lines between on-screen and off-screen “reality,” Cena is the last performer to come from an era before those lines were fully blurred who also lived up to the unrelenting “good guy” character he portrayed.
Put more bluntly: the last time is now.
I miss him already.
______________________________
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