John Cena announces retirement from WWE, 2025 to be his last year in professional wrestling
WWE legend John Cena, the 16-time champion, has announced that 2025 would be his last year in in-ring wrestling.
WWE legend John Cena has announced his retirement from in-ring competition. A 16-time champion and a bonafide future WWE Hall of Famer, Cena, 47, made a surprise appearance at Money in the Bank Pay Per View in Canada, where he revealed that 2025 would be his last year in professional wrestling. He would be appearing on the very first RAW episode of the year, which would also mark WWE's debut on Netflix, the Royal Rumble in February, the Elimination Chamber in March before having his last WWE WrestleMania match in Las Vegas.
"Tonight, I am officially announcing my retirement from the WWE," he said while cutting the most heartbreaking promo of his career. WWE Head of Creative Paul 'Triple H' Levesque tweeted a small video clip of him and Cena hugging backstage with the caption 'The Greatest of All Time'.
Cena later on clarified that WrestleMania 41 will not be his last match and that he wants to do 30-40 dates before riding into the sunset. After his final match, Cena will retire his iconic jorts and will make subsequent appearances in suits.
Cena's retirement marks the end of an era, bringing the curtains down on a career that lasted 23 long years with the main roster, during which he won the WWE championship 13 times and the world heavyweight title on three different occasions, tying with the legendary Ric Flair for the most top title wins in the WWE. Cena had ventured into performing part-time for the company in 2018, letting the younger talents take over. Ever since, he has been making sporadic appearances, mostly 'putting talent over', a term used to describe taking loss to push a younger, promising talent. His last match was against Solo Sikoa at Crown Jewel 2023 where he lost to the Bloodline member after taking 10 Samoan Spikes.
Cena has headlined five WrestleManias – WWE's flagship show of the year. However, the last five years haven't been the greatest for Cena. His last WrestleMania win came in 2017, where he, partnering with former fiancé, Nikki Bella, defeated The Miz and Maryse in an inter-gender tag-team match. Ever since, Cena has lost to the late Bray Wyatt at Mania 36, missed Mania 37 and 38, lost to Austin Theory at Mania 39 and made a surprise return to assist Cody Rhodes in his main-event match with Roman Reigns at Mania 40.
John Cena's legendary career
Cena signed with the WWE in 2001, starting with their then-developmental talent program Ohio Valley Wrestling, famously known as the OVW, as The Prototype. In fact, he, along with Randy Orton, Dave Batista and Brock Lesnar were part of the same batch. On June 27, Cena made his first officially televised WWE debut when he answered Kurt Angle's open challenge.
Transitioning into The Doctor of Thuganomics, a character that would see Cena turn heel (the bad guy), and insult opponents with his freestyle rap. Cena won the US Championship at WrestleMania 20, defeating The Big Show Paul Wight – his first singles title – before capturing his first WWE title a year later at WrestleMania 21. It marked the beginning of the Cena era as he went on to rule the WWE for the next 15 years as the face of the company.
Cena has had matches with the who's who of WWE, including Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, Lesnar, Orton, Edge, triumphing over all of them. He beat Triple H and the Heart Break Kid Shawn Michaels at consecutive WrestleMania in 2006 and 2007. In 2012, Cena was part of a dream match with Dwayne 'The Rock Johnson' which was billed as 'Once in a Lifetime' at WrestleMania 28, although the two ended up doing battle the following WrestleMania as well.
Despite going part-time six years ago, Cena was part of a couple of full-time programs. In 2021, he returned at the Money in the Bank PPV in July to start a feud with Roman Reigns. After weeks of being on a back-and-forth collision course, Cena and Reigns squared off at SummerSlam 2021, with the Tribal Chief emerging victorious. Last year, Cena returned to WWE for a farewell tour, appearing on Smackdown for seven consecutive weeks, which the world knew would be one of his last – if not the last – run with the company. He worked as a special referee in a match between LA Knight and The Miz, partnered with Seth Rollins in a tag-team match against The Imperium, and then again with Knight to beat Jimmy Uso and Sikoa.
Cena, who hasn't won a singles match since 2018, has constantly been teasing retirement for the last two years before knuckling down on the decision earlier today. Having made the tagline 'My Time is Now' famous, Cena came out to the Scotiabank Arena in Montreal, wearing a 'The Last Time is Now' before dropping the R-bomb. Post-retirement, Cena is likely to transition into a full-time movie star, having recently delivered films like The Peacemaker, Fast & Furious F9, Suicide Squad, Bumblebee, the Hidden Strike (with Jackie Chan) and more.