John Cena On WWE Retirement: “My Character Was Killed Off”

John Cena extensively spoke about his WWE retirement recently.

At Saturday Night’s Main Event in December last year, Cena brought the curtains down on his 23-year wrestling career.

His match against Gunther saw him tap out after two decades, much to the annoyance of fans worldwide. The 17-time World Champion has been aware of the criticism for the manner in which he went out.

During an appearance on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast, he explained the final days leading up to retirement from a writer’s perspective.

John Cena explained how he’d have a moment with AJ Styles, followed by seeing Dominik Mysterio win back his Intercontinental Championship in his hometown before facing The Ring General.

He also discussed how the audience reacted to him tapping out, claiming it was the birth of Darth Vader, referencing Gunther.

Cena also admitted that he decided to retire because his institutional knowledge about the industry had become obsolete after contributing 23 years of his life and learning its ins and outs.

I always try and the reason I retired is because physically the business is passing me by. It’s changing in many aspects of where my institutional knowledge is obsolete and I’m recognizing that.

John Cena Plays Down The Shock Of His Retirement

John Cena believes that the fans’ reaction to his retirement, while not surprising, was relentless anger and disappointment.

The 48-year-old said that he was just playing a character that was killed off.

Here’s what I wanna say about that, too. The show doesn’t stop when I’m done. I’m the first character who’s been killed off. That’s what was hard. People were like, “What the f**k?” No, my character was killed off…but that’s the allure, and it was a brave, brave choice to be like, “We’re killing the character off.” [1:07:21 onwards]