John Cena’s final match marks the end of an era | Column
John Cena has had his final match.
The surefire headline act of next year’s WWE Hall of Fame wrestled for the final time on Saturday, losing in stunning fashion. Obviously, people were upset at the finish and wanted a happy ending for the guy that, no matter how many times he faced overwhelming odds, he would always overcome them and win. This time, it didn’t happen.
I don’t know if it was the right choice, but it was the choice WWE, and very likely Cena, wanted. It’s the time-honored tradition in pro wrestling that when you end your career, you get pinned on the way out, or in this case, submit. In Cena’s mind, I am sure he is thinking he did the right thing. For the character that never gave up, he had to in his final match.
With his retirement, WWE is losing their last true blue, mainstream level star. That isn’t to say Roman Reigns or Cody Rhodes aren’t popular, they are by today’s standards. But when Cena took off in the early 2000s, there was only broadcast and cable television, which captured tens of millions of people’s attention. Fast forward to 2025 and the entertainment industry is fragmented. Content creators I’ve never heard of draw millions of viewers and attain huge audiences, yet can still go by completely undetected by anyone not in their fanbase.
Cena is the last wrestler to reach a certain level of popularity that I don’t think can ever really be recreated, at least in this era of entertainment consumption. As the Cena retirement tour winded down, everyone I know kept talking to me about their memories of Cena and how his final matches were going to go. And it’s not that they are or were wrestling fans, they just know who Cena is. They grew up with kids at school who wore Cena’s t-shirts just like how kids wore Austin 3:16 and nWo shirts when I was growing up. That kind of mainstream popularity that they and I grew up with is gone, unlikely to ever return.
When I think of John Cena, I also think about how remarkable it was that despite half of the fans despising him, he never fought back or got upset, nor did WWE abandon him. Cena gained steam when he transitioned into main event status but something shifted once he became champion. Cena’s character underwent a metamorphosis into someone who always towed the company line. He became a good PR soilder who just loved to be there, doing lame PG comedy in front of a crowd who wasn’t buying it. I particularly remember the build to WrestleMania 22 where WWE desperately tried to get babyface Cena over against heel Triple H, only for half the audience to support the future CCO anyway.
To Cena’s credit, he handled the heckling incredibly well through the years. But I think it also (wrongly) taught WWE that ignoring the crowd works as long as you stick with it long enough. When people resented Roman Reigns the same way years later, WWE barreled on through only to learn that the lessons they thought they learned from Cena did not and could not be applied to Reigns, who after years of floundering as a babyface finally did turn heel, and only then did he reach the level of popularity WWE wanted.
John Cena was the ultimate company guy, maybe to an unnerving degree. Always said and did the right thing, was never controversial (well, almost never), never got in trouble, never got mad when something didn’t go right, and usually was able to deliver in key matches, even if he never was a technical marvel. He loved to call it in the ring after all, as people could clearly see in his final match as he was yelling spots to Gunther loudly at the hard cam.
His last match on Saturday represents the end of an era and a time in history that we can never really go back to. But that’s how time works, and Cena’s retirement is a bitter reminder of that.
Bryan Rose is an editor from California that has been covering professional wrestling for well over a decade. He officially joined F4WOnline as an editor in 2017.