WWE Blasted For John Cena Losing Final Match – “This Is Not What People Wanted”
A popular combat sports host disagrees with WWE’s booking decision to have John Cena lose at Saturday Night’s Main Event.
The biggest match in WWE this year may have taken place at Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13th when 17-time WWE World Champion John Cena faced Gunther in what was heavily promoted as Cena’s final match after 23 years in WWE.
Cena and Gunther went on to have a great main event match full of big moves, including Gunther kicking out Cena’s Attitude Adjustment multiple times during the match.
After 24 minutes of action, Gunther had Cena locked into a Sleeper hold on the mat while putting his legs around Cena’s waist. Even though Cena didn’t tap out to end a match in over 20 years, the man who said “Never Give Up” tapped Gunther on the arm and gave up to lose the match.
Following the match, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque walked out with the WWE locker room, and people booed him because they knew he was the head of the creative team. They also booed when Triple H hugged Cena, and Triple H laughed about it.
When fans chanted, “You F**ked Up” at Triple H on the SNME post-show, the WWE boss joked: “I’m actually mildly disappointed. I thought it would be so much louder.”
There is anger among fans because they wanted Cena to win his final match. However, Cena himself said in many interviews that he wanted to leave the business better than he found it, and many people believe that Cena likely had no problem putting over Gunther since it was Cena’s last match. That’s considered a time-honored tradition since men like Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, and numerous lost their final WWE matches. Some of them win the final match, like The Undertaker, but a lot of them lose.
Ariel Helwani is a popular combat sports journalist who has had many pro wrestlers on his podcast over the years. Helwani has even worked as a journalist on WWE PLEs like Elimination Chamber in Montreal in 2023, which is where he is from. While speaking on his Ariel Helwani Show on Monday, Helwani criticized WWE for having Cena lose.
“The fan boys will be like ‘No, this is what you have to do, this is what John wanted, this is exactly what he wanted, he wanted to give back to the business.’ And to that I say BS. I say hogwash to that. I say that’s nonsense because that is an ideology from a business that no longer exists. That’s 1970s, 1980s wrestling.”
“That’s not WWE Unreal territory, that’s not the era that we’re living in now.”
Ariel Helwani Believes Gunther Never Should Have Faced John Cena To Begin With
Whether John Cena was the one who decided that he should lose to Gunther or it was up to Triple H is unknown. The choice of the former 2-time World Champion Gunther as Cena’s opponent was likely a Triple H call, but that’s not known for sure either. Helwani continued to criticize WWE’s booking.
“Who wanted to see John Cena lose time and again in the last few months? Got his ass whooped by Brock Lesnar, lost to Dominik Mysterio, loses to Gunther. And not only does he lose in his retirement match, the guy who told us for 20+ years never to give up, not only does he lose, he loses via submission.”
“No, I reject this. This is not what those people wanted. This is not what anyone who was a fan of his wanted.”
As Helwani continued, he said that Cena should have beaten Gunther, but also stated that Gunther shouldn’t have been the opponent.
“The match should have never been Cena vs. Gunther to begin with, and the result should have never been Cena losing, and it sure as hell never should have been him tapping.”
The criticism continued with Helwani claiming that Cena deserved better.
“No one wanted to see John Cena go out like that. And to suggest it’s a time-honored tradition for him to ‘do the job’ is such a thing of the past. We live in a different era. Cena deserved better. The farewell tour had so much potential. In the end, it feels like fans were left wanting more. I think it was a mistake.” (H/T WONF4W)
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