John Cena Retiring From WWE Compared To Legendary TV Show
A WWE superstar thinks that John Cena retiring when he did was like the ending of a huge TV show.
At WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event, future Hall of Famer John Cena tapped out to Gunther in the dreaded Sleeper while competing in what was Cena’s final match as an active WWE superstar.
While Cena was known for the phrase “Never Give Up” during his career, he decided to end his career by giving up with a smile on his face.
Before and after the match, the 48-year-old Cena has been adamant that, while he remains part of WWE as an Ambassador, he doesn’t plan to wrestle again. Obviously, the WWE icon Cena will be busy with his acting career.
While discussing the end of Cena’s career, his good friend and WWE superstar Natalya spoke to the Toronto Sun about how people didn’t want him to retire, even though he put in 23 years of incredible work on the WWE main roster.
“I think it’s really important to validate feelings. People online are upset, people feel angry. A lot of people are just sad and hurt and pissed that he’s retiring. Yeah, we knew that weren’t going to get John Cena wrestling forever, but we were like, damn, this last year, he gave us some of his best work.
I loved his match with AJ Styles. John’s just been doing some of his best work. People felt like, John, I don’t want you to go, you can still do it.”
John Cena Walking Away From WWE Is Like Seinfeld
When The Ringer’s Bill Simmons spoke about Cena’s last match, he compared it to the ending of the popular HBO show The Sopranos, which had an ending that many people didn’t like.
As she continued speaking about Cena’s final match, Natalya spoke about how Jerry Seinfeld ended his legendary TV show “Seinfeld” after 9 seasons, even though he could have made a lot of money to keep going.
“What I really love about John’s ending is that he left on his terms. I talk about this in my book, about beating the house. Very very few professional athletes gets to beat the house. Very few get to leave on their own terms. Most people leave because they’re forced into it.
John did what Jerry Seinfeld did. Jerry Seinfeld stopped doing his own show when he was like the number one show on television. I remember when I was a kid, I used to love Seinfeld, we loved that show, and I was devastated when Seinfeld went off the air, like, they were the number one show on TV at the time.
Jerry Seinfeld said, ‘Yeah, we want to leave on top. We don’t want to leave when the ratings tank.’
You see with John, he did it on his own terms but people are just feeling everything. I don’t think people are happy because at the end of the day, nobody really wanted to see John leave and they didn’t like the way he left.
We all wanted see him win. I do think John is a company guy, I do think he would have gone into war over that ending. I think the way that John is, just knowing the person that he is, he just wants to keep paying it forward. He wants to make sure that he leaves the business better than he came in.”
Natalya’s Seinfeld memory was on point because Jerry Seinfeld turned down $5 million per episode to do another season of “Seinfeld” on NBC, meaning he would have made over $100 million, since seasons usually lasted 22 episodes.
Obviously, Seinfeld ending when it did worked out fine for him because the series ended nearly 30 years ago, but it’s still all over television and streaming services as one of the most popular comedy shows of all time.