10 Untouchable WWE Stars Who Got Special Treatment
9. John Cena
Not all preferential treatment is necessarily bad.
However, a year long retirement tour isn’t something WWE hands out to just anyone. Being fair, John Cena is far from just another member of the roster. He's one of the biggest stars in history, and he can look back on an epic main event run that lasted a full generation. At times during the peak PG days, it was like Cena was carrying WWE on his back. He was the poster boy. Nobody else on-screen was more important than him.
Recently, both Chris Jericho and CM Punk have remarked about the “ego” of announcing your own retirement and holding a lengthy tour to wrap up your career, but this is ‘Big Match John’ we’re talking about. Again, he was a franchise player. Without being cruel, and despite their wealth of success, neither Jericho nor Punk have ever been 'the guy'. Cena was...for a long, long time.
It's a slight surprise that he didn't win the 2025 Royal Rumble. That speaks to Cena's humility and willingness to do business properly on the way out. If his ego was running wild, then he'd have demanded that Triple H let him win everything going one last time before hanging up the colourful t-shirts and dashing back to the warm embrace of Hollywood.
Cena hasn't done that, at least not yet. There's still time for him to flex his muscles behind the scenes and push WWE into doing things his way. It'd be remarkable if a star the size of John didn't grab something for himself on the way out the door.