The John Cena farewell tour concluded on Saturday Night’s Main Event and the in ring career of John Cena is over. I was curious to see if I talked about John Cena’s debut in an old edition of The Wrestling List and indeed I did. In the July 1, 2002 edition of The Wrestling List, I wrote “I have to mention the debut of John Cena on Smackdown Thursday night. I am really impressed with him. He took on Kurt Angle and did a great job. Very good match. This guy could really have a future.” Well, he did have a future indeed. LOL. When I read that, I said, ok, I really like that this was the simple wording I used of seeing a brand new guy with a debut with little to know that he is going to end up being an all time great. This past week has been fun watching all the Cena coverage and tributes. The music video that WWE did with all the people holding up the signs and doing Cena trademark stuff. Just beautifully edited and that song fit it so well. Here it is if you missed it and I so recommend it.
Let’s talk about John Cena’s last match. I know everyone has so many opinions on this and many of them strong obviously. I understand all of them cause everyone had their expectation of what they wanted from it. Some wanted him to win. Some wanted him to lose. Some wanted him to only lose this way. Some didn’t like the booking of how it happened. John Cena is somebody that so many people have strong connection with as fans. So, people are going to have a whole lot of emotions on it. I expected Cena to lose the match. In fact, I expected him to lose his last two matches. He was going to have to drop the Intercontinental title to someone. With his final match, Cena is old school and he has mentioned in interviews that he’s of the opinion that when people leave a territory that they go out losing. That’s what Cena did. So, did Triple H come up with the finish? Did Cena come up with the finish? I’m sure we’ll know at some point and possibly on a future episode of Unreal. If I had to make an absolute guess on it, I would say that Cena pitched to go out losing. That goes with everything he has said. As the match was going on, I myself got pulled in too saying geez, I want to see Cena win the more I see of this match. I expected him to lose but it was still tugging on the heart. I was having fun in front of my tv doing the “you can’t see” to my TV and just throwing myself into a moment that I knew was the last one. So I totally get that the Cena diehards are furious and heartbroken cause they wanted that final moment. I enjoyed the match and I lost count of how many times I said “I think this is it” and then either Gunther would kick out or Cena would make another push. The amount of hope spots we were getting from Cena really pulled on the strings of ‘I think Cena might pull this out’. After the match, the boos were directed at Triple H when he walked out for the Cena tribute at the end. Again, this might have been Cena’s call to Triple H saying “I’m losing” and this is how I want to lose. We won’t know until someone says something on it. I feel like this was a moment with a lot of fans that have been losing some trust with Triple H as a booker this year. Triple H has looked like he’s been on shaky ground a bit this year with a bunch of fans and this felt like the moment where so many fans just avalanched on him. Have things been great this year? Nope. My biggest thing this year against Triple H was the Cena heel turn. It was a terrible idea and felt like it had no plan. Even in interviews last week, Cena alluded to yeah, it didn’t go great but Cena is Cena and he’s not going to name names or throw people under the bus. It’s just not who he is. He also said that he really needed more time. I’ve said all along that this could have worked 15-20 years ago but this wasn’t the time as the fan base hasn’t been divided on Cena since probably 2018. When he returns, the base is with him. We saw on Unreal how the plan went on how the heel turn evolved. They’ve mentioned how they wanted to create a moment and they did that. Problem is that they had nothing for after the moment. You can create a moment but you have to have a story to follow. They’ve alluded to “changes” after which kept the story from following up. I don’t know. We may never know. Regardless, the heel turn wasn’t good. I feel like this was a tipping point against Triple H with a group of fans not happy with the product. Now, we wait and see the fallout of all of this.
Looking back at John Cena’s career, he did a whole lot for WWE and WWE isn’t where it is now without him. He stayed true to himself. He powered through. When fans weren’t accepting him as the happy babyface that just wasn’t trendy during that 2000’s period, he didn’t change. He put a smile on his face and stood up to the boos. He stood up when he was getting booed at WrestleMania 22 in Chicago. This year he got a standing ovation and loved on with his last appearance in Chicago with him telling that crowd how much it meant to him hearing that cause Chicago was one of his toughest towns. He walked into the lion’s den of the Hammerstein Ballroom during ECW One Night Stand 2006 and he did his thing. He let those fans do their thing. I remember watching that night thinking what a surreal moment that was and Cena didn’t back down from it. He crossed over into pop culture with movies and TV. He jumped into Make A Wish and has been such a huge important part of that which means so much to him. He meant so much to those kids. He stood up for them knowing that they saw him as their hero. He embraced how his haters saw him with the five moves of doom. Turned up the volume higher on the five moves of doom. He continued to be John when CM Punk showed up and was the hero that so many fans wanted against that WWE babyface establishment of Cena. I know cause I was one of those fans that was with Punk. LOL. That moment of Cena vs Punk in Chicago at Money In The Bank is still one of my favorite matches of all time between the match, the moment, the behind the scenes, and all of it. It was lightning in a bottle and it was great. I’ve seen John Cena in person many times in shows ranging from 2003 on up to 2015. He always left me entertained. It was fun to sit in a crowd and just watch that building pop for him. The energy of that Cenation was with him. He was going to go out there and perform for every single fan wanting them to get their money’s worth. Let’s not forget that this is the guy that almost got fired right at the beginning of his WWE career. He’ll be the first to tell you that he wasn’t doing good and then Stephanie McMahon heard him rapping on the bus one day and noticed how good he was at that. She said why aren’t you doing that on TV and suggested he tried that. He went with it saying he was going to do whatever was proposed cause he was convinced he was going to be fired any day. The rest is history so he went from a desperation of being afraid he’s getting fired to now one of the all time greats and a 17 time world champion. Incredible how things work out. I’ve tried putting into words with Cena’s career and it’s really impossible. I’ll just quit talking and say watch this incredible video that ran at the end of the tribute last night.
The rest of Saturday Night’s Main Event. I really enjoyed this show. It had such a big energy feel to it obviously. I enjoyed the opener as I thought I would with Cody vs Oba Femi. I thought they’d have good chemistry and they did. I loved seeing Oba on the big stage. The match finished like I thought it would with a Drew run in. I said that’s the only way for this match to end cause you really can’t pin either one of them with a finish. I expected Drew but I was hoping it wouldn’t be so quickly. I wanted it to go longer. Bayley and Sol Ruca was fun. Bayley puts over the young NXT star. I thought they had a good match. I enjoy Sol Ruca. I get concerned about her long term cause her moves are so crash and burn high impact style that I hope she stays healthy. I was happy that Bayley got to do some of her Cena tribute gear she had on the way but got stuck in transit through shipment. She credited the backstage crew big time for making it happen last minute where she could still make her Cena tribute gear happen. AJ Styles and Dragon Lee vs Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater was the high flying crazy that I expected. Good stuff there. We got a fun cameo from R Truth, Joe Hendry, and The Miz before the Cena match. Great to see them get on the show. I still wish Miz had gotten to do something with Cena this year and I feel like that is a messup by Triple H this year too. Loved getting to see the legends in attendance. The KO surprise was awesome and a huge pop from the crowd. Loved seeing Cena and RVD interact.
It’s been a Cena heavy week and fittingly so. I know my mood was emotional as a wrestling fan over the weekend knowing that an end of an era was upon us cause it’s always tough to say goodbye to the legends. Thank you John.
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