Date set for John Cena’s WWE retirement match
John Cena’s in-ring career officially has less than four months remaining.
It was already known that Cena would be retiring from the ring this December. A date for his retirement match has now been set, with it scheduled to take place on a December 13 edition of Saturday Night’s Main Event. There is no location or opponent confirmed yet, but the expectation has been that TD Garden in Boston will host the show with Massachusetts being Cena’s home state.
There had been rumors that WWE was considering moving the December SNME special to December 27 so it would air opposite AEW’s World Ends pay-per-view, but that will not be the case.
The announcement of the December 13 date was made in conjunction with the news that Saturday Night’s Main Event will now be streaming exclusively on Peacock going forward as part of a multi-year deal between WWE and NBCUniversal. SNME, a classic WWE series that dates back to the 1980s, made its return as a quarterly special in December 2024 and had been airing on both Peacock and NBC prior to today’s announcement that the NBC simulcast is going away.
WWE and Peacock have also confirmed a Saturday Night’s Main Event special for November 1.
With his retirement tour in its final months, Cena has a match against Logan Paul scheduled for Clash in Paris on August 31. It’s then expected that Cena vs. Brock Lesnar will happen at WWE Wrestlepalooza on September 20.
Clash in Paris will be the final WWE PLE to air on Peacock, with WWE’s new partnership with ESPN kicking off with the Wrestlepalooza event. Peacock will still have SNME, NXT PLEs, and the WWE content library (the library is scheduled to leave Peacock at the end of 2025 as things stand):
- Saturday Night’s Main Event will stream in primetime exclusively on Peacock four times each year, featuring WWE’s top Superstars, rivalries, championship matches, and more.
- Peacock will exclusively stream two nights of Saturday Night’s Main Events this year, with the first taking place on November 1. Additionally, Saturday Night’s Main Event on Dec. 13 will feature John Cena in his retirement match.
- The WWE Network library will remain available on Peacock through the end of 2025, and NXT Premium Live Events will be available on Peacock until March 2026.
- Throughout the term of the partnership, the SmackDown library will remain on Peacock on a 30-day delay and USA Network will continue as the live exclusive home of SmackDown on Friday nights.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.