5 Ups & 8 Downs From John Cena's WWE Retirement Tour

by Scott Carlson

1. Going Out On His Shield

WWE Saturday Night's Main Event Gunther John Cena
WWE

We don’t have to look far for the best part of John Cena’s retirement year, and he actually did save the best for last.

Cena and Gunther tore the house down with their match at Saturday Night’s Main Event this past weekend, a big fight crammed with as much drama and emotion that could be stuffed into a single wrestling match. For more than 20 minutes, the two of them had 19,000 fans eating out of their hands as they cycled through their catalogs of wrestling moves, with neither man able to put the other away.

Gunther gained the upper-hand and finally locked in the sleeper – repeatedly – until Cena eventually stopped fighting back and did the unthinkable: he tapped out. The crowd noise, the drama, and the actual wrestling all worked together perfectly for this career send-off, allowing Cena to end his career on a true high note.

What makes this even more significant is the reality that by closing out with a solid final match, Cena’s retirement tour will be remembered much more fondly than any could have envisioned just a few short months earlier. This final match also should help remove some of the stink of Cena’s heel run – sure, it will be mentioned, but fans will be able to point to how he went out rather than a five-month failed experiment.

All told, John Cena’s retirement tour was a true mixed bag: He entered the year with a lot of potential, which WWE horribly squandered and very nearly ruined, but he managed to finish strong and leave on a high note with a memorable final match and the adulation of his peers and fans alike.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.