John Cena thought retiring at WrestleMania would be selfish.
The handling of Cena's retirement run received a lot of criticism from fans. One of the biggest points of complaint was having the Cenation Leader's final match at a Saturday Night's Main Event in middle of December instead of WrestleMania a few months later.
During his recent appearance on the No Contest Wrestling podcast, the 17-time world champion explained the reasoning behind this choice. John Cena noted that December is a tough month for WWE because people are saving their money for Holidays:
December is like a month in limbo. They've never really been able to crack that code. And with people on holiday, there's until the holiday season is over, until like the 26th, tickets are tough to sell. Because people are spending on holiday presents. So it's a weak month for viewership, it's a weak month for live attendance and every 'fan' fans are like, 'Wait till January.' We've advertised. That's when the road to WrestleMania starts.
Sure Enough, It Worked: John Cena
John Cena reiterated that he had no hand in choosing the arena or the opponent for his final match. He did choose the month of December, because he thought it was the place where he could do the most for the business:
When I presented this idea to Nick Khan and Triple H, they were awesome. 'Who do you want to work with? What event do you want to retire?' I simply said, 'Hunter who I want to work with is up to you. That's your department. I have never been that guy. I don't want to take this last year and change who I am. You deal with my plan. Nick, from a business perspective, the data that I've gathered over 23 years of doing business is December is soft. WrestleMania is gonna sell itself.'
So retiring at WrestleMania is selfish. It doesn't do anything for the business. We retire in December, our weakest month. We take the middle of December, the dry zone, that desert from the end of Survivor Series to the beginning of the Rumble. We put it like right in the middle of December.
Just because I know once you do the holiday tour, the houses will come back. You guys will make money. Let's show a profit in Q4. You put whatever arena you want, doesn't matter. I have no affiliation to geography. Just let's get ourselves in the best position to have the best December we can, because this is a, I feel, it's an event that people will pay to see. And sure enough, it worked.
The December 2025 SNME brought in 19,274 fans and became the highest-grossing WWE arena event ever as well as the highest-grossing event ever at the Capital One Arena.
Elsewhere in the interview, John Cena also commented on Cody Rhodes and other names wanting to bring back live events. You can check out why the Hollywood star spoke negatively about the prospect here.
