Retirements Of John Cena & AJ Styles Had Major Impact On Former WWE Champion

A major WWE superstar admits that the retirements of John Cena and AJ Styles have had a big impact on the roster.

John Cena had his final match on December 13th when he lost to Gunther at Saturday Night’s Main Event. AJ Styles also lost his final match at the Royal Rumble when he lost to Gunther as well.

On WWE Monday Night Raw in Atlanta, the legendary career of AJ Styles was celebrated in the main event of the show. That celebration also led to The Undertaker surprising Styles by informing him that Styles will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame this April during WrestleMania 42 weekend.

Cena and Styles are both 48 years old (each will be 49 later this year), so it makes sense they would want to retire after 25+ years as pro wrestlers.

Since the current wrestlig business features a lot of wrestlers in their 40s as well, it likely puts things in perspective for them too.

Finn Balor Is Reflecting On His Own WWE Career After Retirements Of Cena & Styles

While speaking to Uncrowned, former WWE Universal Champion Finn Balor mentioned the retirements of Cena and Styles while thinking about his own run in pro wrestling.

“Seeing John [Cena] retire was obviously very emotional. Seeing AJ retire … someone who’s had a similar path to me, was just that little bit older, a couple steps ahead of me — he was someone that I considered the benchmark of where I needed to be.

Seeing him retire made me realize, ‘Oh, retirement is just around the corner for me, too. And you’ve still got this big stain on your career that everyone keeps asking you, ‘What if?” And in Belfast [in January], when I lost to Punk [for the World Heavyweight Title], I realized the time is running out and you need to fix this quickly.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. I need to right the wrong of what happened 10 years ago — not for me, but for everyone else.”

The 44-year-old Finn Balor will challenge CM Punk for the World Heavyweight Title at Elimination Chamber on Saturday, February 28th. It will be Balor’s second attempt to dethrone Punk after failing the first time on Raw in Belfast.