Why WWE Is Keeping John Cena Tournament Plans Under Wraps (WWE News)

By Andrew Pollard / November 6, 2025

With WWE recently announcing a The Last Time Is Now tournament to decide who'll face John Cena in his retirement match, some fans were a little disappointed that WWE only announced two matches and four wrestlers for that tourney on this week's Raw.

In a video narrated by Cena himself, the announcement of that tournament stated that talents from Raw, SmackDown, and NXT will be involved, and also teased some wrestlers who don't work for the company. On Monday night, Rusev vs. Damian Priest and Sheamus vs. Shinsuke Nakamura were confirmed to kick off the tournament on next week's Raw, with another two matches expected to be announced on this week's SmackDown.

Discussing this tournament on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer said the reason WWE hasn't announced the full brackets for The Last Time Is Now is because there are some surprises planned that the company doesn't want to reveal yet.

With the mention of wrestlers from outside of WWE, that immediately had fans speculating about Chris Jericho or Adam Copeland - two of Cena's greatest rivals - being a part of this tournament, and there have even been some people who think this could pave the way for Hiroshi Tanahashi - himself on the cusp of retirement - to line up a match against John Cena.

In reality, it would be far more realistic to expect a Matt Cardona, a Nic Nemeth, or a Joe Hendry to be some of the surprises lined up for this tournament, though that's purely the thoughts of your writer. Unless something's changed dramatically and it's been kept incredibly hush-hush, Adam Copeland is still under contract with AEW, Chris Jericho's AEW deal isn't up until later in the year, and Tanahashi is another who seems extremely unlikely. Still, that doesn't mean that WWE can't have some fun with whatever surprises they have up their sleeve as we head towards John Cena's final match at the 13 December edition of Saturday Night's Main Event.