Today we sadly seen the end to the legendary career of John Cena. The expectations for this was high and now it’s all said and done, the booking certainly failed to deliver.
The whole year has been booked horribly by Triple H from wanting Cena to do only 36 dates rather than full time like Cena wanted. He had matches with no builds rather than feuds driven by stories. There was also the failed heel turn which never hit well and was very out of touch with what the fans wanted to see in 2025.
Then you have the Time is Now Tournament which Cena wanted to be a way for someone to step up like he did on his debut. For something like this you’ expect someone like Cena when he debuted, someone who was young and never held a main roster title before so they could put their name on the map. So rather than follow that and give the opportunity to some young up and coming superstar like Melo, Oba Femi, Trick Williams, Bron Breakker or Austin Theory it was given to Gunther who is not only a 2 time former world champ that retired Gunther, but also in his late 30’s and one of the most boring names on the roster.
If you watched the event you’ll see that Oba Femi got an insane reaction for his first ever main roster match. He had better reactions than Gunther has ever got AND he’s only 27 years old so if anything, he should have been the one to retire Cena. The most disappointing fact is how this match ended, with Cena tapping out in a manner that seemed like he wasn’t happy with the ending and couldn’t care less.
I could imagine if Vince had still been running WWE, Cena’s retirement would have been about him proving to himself he can still do it with every single match being a “if he loses he retires” type of scenario so you never know which is his last match. Sadly thanks to Triple H and his consistently horrible booking, we got this lackluster final year that is now over and we’ll never see Cena wrestle again…