WWE Cruelly Rejected John Cena’s Pitch For Retirement Year

John Cena has revealed the truth about his WWE retirement tour and says he wanted to do a lot more than the company would let him.

John Cena is on the verge of hanging up his jorts for the last time at Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13th against Gunther.

Cena has not been a full-time member of the WWE roster for several years, but returned fully focused to the company for his retirement year. John Cena shocked the world at Elimination Chamber when he turned heel before he broke the record for most reigns as WWE Champion at WrestleMania 41 when he defeated Cody Rhodes.

As spring turned to summer, fans soured on John Cena’s heel run as it stuttered through matches with old rivals such as CM Punk and Randy Orton before taking a bizarre twist into a feud with R-Truth. The whole thing was abandoned before Cena lost the WWE Title back to Rhodes at SummerSlam, and fans have enjoyed showing their love to Cena in his final few appearances.

But it seems John Cena wanted to show a lot more love to the fans than WWE would let him.

WWE Cut John Cena’s Final Run From 200 Dates To 36

Speaking to Tom Rinaldi on WWE’s YouTube channel, John Cena revealed that he had originally wanted to work 200 dates for WWE in 2025 so he could say his goodbyes to as many people as possible:

Just to say goodbye to everybody. I wanted to try to go everywhere from Perth, Australia, to Mid-Hudson Civic Center, you name it, I wanted to go everywhere I’ve been to just say ‘thank you’ to everybody.

But that didn’t work for WWE as Cena revealed:

And the WWE came back and said, “Nah, we only need 36 dates.”

John Cena noted he went to WWE with a business plan to show how lucrative his retirement run could be, but with the company eliminating untelevised live events, they weren’t interested:

I came to them with pitch decks and specs and ‘this is what I think the projected revenues are,’ not just talking WWE story out of my butt. Like ‘Hey I think this is a good business plan’ and they said ‘That’s not our business.’

But it got us to here and this is a pretty cool spot to be in.