10 Things We Learned From John Cena On Stephanie McMahon's WWE Show
4. What Prompted His WWE Retirement
Time waits for no man.
Steph asked how John came to the decision that he should retire from wrestling completely. His answer? “By continuously coming here and being disappointed”. By "here", he means his Hard Nocks gym. “This place usually makes me feel good. Why do I feel bad?”, he asked himself. John had started to look at the lift numbers on the walls, and he realised he couldn’t physically do that anymore. It was a bit of a trip mentally.
Now, John realises he isn’t who he used to be, but that was a whole lot to process and took him a while to come to peace with. On ESPN, Cena was also completely upfront and honest about his skills regressing inside WWE rings. Watch his WrestleMania 41 battle vs. Cody Rhodes, or his bout vs. Randy Orton from Backlash 2025 and you'll see what he means.
Today, JC knows he isn’t a patch on the ‘Big Match John’ he was before. How could he be? He's taken a lot of time away from the ring to concentrate on his fledgling Hollywood career, and the guy is 48 years old. It'd be unrealistic for anybody to think they could still go the same way they did a decade or so ago.
Revisiting his gym and trying to workout the way he used to was a humbling experience for Cena. McMahon was intrigued by that, and rightly so. She'd just tapped into the human side of John, and found the one reason responsible for him calling time on WWE life.