Is John Cena Secretly Hinting At Retirement (AGAIN)?
Was there a hidden message in the Firefly Funhouse match?
John Cena has been flirting with retirement in recent times as much as his Twitter account has flirted with him becoming a sort of wrestling industry Dalai Lama (at the same time as his Instagram being the crazed tome of a hyperactive toddler).
And the Doctor of Thuganomics is at it again, having taken to social media in the wake of his WrestleMania match with Bray Wyatt's Fiend for a cryptic tweet seemingly teasing the end of his active career.
Here's what he had to say:
Naturally, that's led to lots of speculation from fans and industry voices that Cena plans to hang up his jorts.
If you dig a little deeper - as Sam Roberts did after 'Mania's end - there might be even more to the hint that lots of people missed first time around.
Roberts broke down the Firefly Fun House in huge detail, pointing out lots of little details and Easter Eggs embedded in the delightfully bonkers match. And the biggest takeaway is that Cena might have actually used the match to retire from WWE.
The match, of course, basically told the entire story of Cena's career from his debut in WWE, exploring major steps along the way including the refusal to turn heel. Roberts' assessment is that Wyatt was establishing that Cena has been the WWE's most over-hyped, over-pushed star of all time.
It was, for all intents and purposes, a privilege check.
The Fiend conquered Cena, turning his image on its head and exorcising an evil from WWE - a sell-out who bullied others on his way to becoming a major star but with a huge albatross hanging around his neck. Wyatt offered a black mirror revealing to Cena that he was actually a failure, despite his apparent successes.
And in Roberts' assessment, the fact that Cena literally disappeared after The Fiend's victory was the symbolic indication that he actually is no more. And what better way to do it than by allowing Bray Wyatt - someone he admired enough, allegedly, to hand-pick for his WrestleMania 36 match?
Of course, there's also the point in Cena's tweet about keeping us all guessing, so it may not be as cut and dried as this. But stranger things have certainly happened.