John Cena walked into WWE with plans to go absolutely insane for his retirement tour — and the company gave him an answer he probably wasn’t expecting. Cena wanted to clear his schedule for an entire year and work roughly 250 WWE shows, but Creative told him straight up, “We don’t work like that anymore.”
Cena revealed the exchange during his Q&A at Tampa Bay Comic Convention after being asked whether there was anything he wanted to do during his retirement run that never happened. His original vision was much bigger than the farewell tour WWE ultimately gave him. Cena said he was prepared to put everything else on hold and spend the entire year working wherever WWE wanted to send him.
“Ah, so uh the forever question. What you want to do and what reality gives you, right? What I want to do is still wrestle. So, what I wanted to do, the proposed um syllabus when I went to the to the WWE with the tour was like hey, what do I know uh we do. We hit 250 shows a year. I want to just do it big. I’m going to take a year off of everything. And I’m going to do a full year.”
That’s when WWE hit Cena with the real story — the company simply doesn’t run its business around that kind of schedule anymore.
“And we’re going to go around wherever you want to do it. And uh this is what I would like to do. And WWE Creative said we don’t work like that anymore. Um we’re focusing way more on our television product and our premium live event product. We want you for 36 dates.”
So instead of Cena spending his final year grinding through roughly 250 appearances, WWE wanted just 36 dates and made it clear television and premium live events were the priority. Cena said that immediately forced him to change what he thought his retirement run was going to be.
“So, initially my expectations were full year, 250 shows. Immediately it was like we want this and we’re the provider. So, I kind of got to pivot. I’ve always been one to say like, hey, this is what I think. And when someone comes back and said this is what we’re doing no problem. Let’s rock and roll.”
Cena also made it clear he wasn’t trying to use those 250 dates to demand a laundry list of dream matches. He simply wanted to work as much as possible because he thought a full-year run would be good for WWE.
“So, I didn’t have like a list of opponents. Uh I didn’t have uh like dream matches or anything like that. It was simply like I just want to try to be able to do this cuz I think it’d be good for the business. And the people who are are the business agreed with me. And uh and we got to do it. Yeah. Thank you.”
Cena was ready to give WWE an old-school, full-year farewell tour, but WWE itself slammed the brakes on that idea. The message from Creative was simple: the company doesn’t work that way anymore, and one of the biggest stars in WWE history was getting 36 dates instead of 250.
Do you think WWE made the right call telling John Cena “we don’t work like that anymore,” or should they have let him go all-out for one final year? Drop your thoughts in the comments and let us know.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
