WWE fans had no idea what they were in for when perhaps the best wrestler-turned-actor, John Cena, announced his retirement from in-ring competition in July 2024. A little over a year later, and the upcoming WWE events calendar only has a few appearances from the Peacemaker star left where his millions of fans can see the wildly popular “last real champion” verbally assassinate his competition before doing his all to beat them in the ring. While Cena has admitted he’d wrestle “for free,” he’s also now opened up about why his run as a WWE superstar has to end.
What Did John Cena Say About Why He’s Ending His Wrestling Career Now?
No wrestling fan is ever without intriguing topics of conversation, but one thing that’s consistently dominated sports entertainment chatter in 2025 has been John Cena’s farewell tour. After making his WWE debut way back in June 2002 with a lot of “ruthless aggression,” this is now his last year as a competitor.
Not only have he and the company cleaned up when it comes to merch sales (a new shirt/hat/rally towel combo for every city) and selling out his appearances (whether he wrestled that night or not), but his long-hoped-for (but still shocking) heel turn and recent pre-Summer Slam reversal to face form have kept folks yelling “You can’t see me!” at every opportunity. With the arrival of WWE: Unreal (available with a Netflix subscription), however, fans can hear the future hall of fame star open up about his love of wrestling and why he has to call it a day now. In a clip (which was posted on Instagram), Cena said:
Wrestling is the foundation of the house of my family relationship. I grew up in a family of five boys, and wrestling was our conduit. It was our connection system. I appreciate this as my hobby. It’s the best of Imagination Land. Not only did I do it during my free time, but I paid to do it. So, I would do this for free. I just physically can’t do it anymore.
The now 17 time WWE World Champion has been open in the recent past about how his time as a wrestler was running out. In fact, shortly before Money in the Bank 2024 (where he announced his retirement), he was open about it, and told People “I know my WWE journey is coming to an end.”
He’d also, way back in 2021 when he was in the midst of another active wrestling run, did say he didn’t want to get slower in the ring to the point where he was “offending the customer,” so it would appear that in the past couple of years he did hit the point where he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up for much longer. You can watch the full clip, below:
Even though it’s unfortunate that Cena has now basically hit that wall, at least he was aware enough to see it coming, get ahead of it and pull out all the stops so that he could give fans a surprising final year. As noted, it’s not quite over yet, so we can look forward to having a few months of big and (likely) shocking moments with Cena to close out the year before it’s all said and done.
