John Cena has no regrets about how his WWE retirement tour played out.
On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Cena was asked whether he was satisfied with the year, given the mixed reaction to his heel turn and the creative direction. His answer was simple: “No regrets.”
He said the tour was about helping WWE, not about ego.
The whole idea of the retirement tour wasn’t, like, an egotistical thing. It was a, like, man, this business invested so much in me. How can we take the IP and really do a good thing for the business?
How can we make 2025 a year where you can begin to gain relevance and take that and leverage it into whatever content agreements you have? Or, like, how can we get to a new territory internationally by advertising, ‘Yo, we’ll give you one of John’s last performances.'
Cena revealed the farewell tour was his own idea. He gave WWE two options.
And I pitched to WWE, and I was like, ‘Hey, listen, either it’s this or, like, I just post on X that I’m retired.’ Yeah, that post is gonna get a ton of traction, but X is gonna get paid for that.
Like, let’s do something that’s fulfilling for the audience, and let’s do something that keeps the company’s lights on. And that’s where the idea of the farewell tour was born.
He admitted not every story landed, but said fans never stopped caring.
And the great thing about the story is it p—-ed people off. People didn’t like parts. People did like parts. Conversation erupted, but it wasn’t apathetic. We had no empty seats.
I had some misses. I had some hits. Lack of effort was not one, you know? And I’m very proud of that last year.
Cena turned heel in early 2025, won his record 17th world title from Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 and lost it back to Rhodes at SummerSlam. He wrestled his final match against Gunther in December 2025.
