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

4. The Driest Promos You’ve Ever Heard

John Cena
WWE.com

Immediately after turning heel at Elimination Chamber, John Cena was going to command everyone’s attention when he finally grabbed a microphone to explain his actions.

His first attempt got a lot of latitude (at least from this writer), but it very quickly became obvious in subsequent promos that they had nothing. There simply was no “there” there. Cena didn’t have anything other than a repeated mantra that he was going to “ruin wrestling” by winning the Undisputed WWE Championship and then retire with it, ending its lineage.

The promos weren’t just dull, boring and often heatless. They had no soul. There was nothing for fans to invest in, other than the reality that Cena was in his final year and wouldn’t be returning to their city. But no one bought the whole “I’m taking the title with me at the end of the year” shtick.

All Cena did with these promos was tarnish his legacy on the mic, bore fans and solidify that the heel turn was a big mistake.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.