John Cena Reveals Ambitious Original Plan For His Retirement Tour

John Cena has one remaining date on his calendar as an active in-ring WWE superstar. On December 13, the one-time Doctor of Thuganomics will work his 36th date of a divisive, discourse-laden retirement tour.

Standing across the ring from him on December 13 at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. will be one of Gunther or LA Knight, who will clash in the final of The Last Time Is Now Tournament to decide who faces the 17-time World Champion in his final ever match.

If Cena had initially had his way, however, his final 12 months would have been far, far busier.

John Cena Wanted To Go Old School With His Retirement Tour

During a recent interview with The Ringer's Bill Simmons, Cena went into detail about how hectic 2025 has been for him, juggling his last stretch of WWE storylines and matches with his career in Hollywood, which has seen the Never Seen 17 traverse the globe for projects, between locations such as Hungary and Morocco, and then working across Europe and Australia as part of his WWE schedule.

"‘Hey man, 36 dates must have been easy this year.’ I did too many jobs. I was in Budapest, flying to Indy, do Indy, fly back, land, go film. Doing that until post-WrestleMania. Back and forth to Morocco, Budapest, all these crazy places that weren’t easy commutes. You think you can do it, ‘I’ll sleep on the plane.’ You don’t. It doesn’t happen. Then, you get upside down and you’re super fatigued. I threaded the needle just enough,”
John Cena

Cena continued, explaining that his original plan for retirement had been to throw it back to the mid-late '00s and run a 220 date tour.

“The plan, originally, was to do a full year. This goes to show my ignorance of the business. I wanted to do 220 dates. Just take the year off from everything, hop on a bus, do a full WWE calendar, and totally say goodbye. Thank goodness the business isn’t like that anymore. I’d be done. They only needed me for 36,”

Cena Says You Can Call Him a Liar if he Returns After Retirement

Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week, Cena once again stressed that he really, REALLY is retiring from in-ring competition on December 13. While wrestler retirements are about as believable as a story told by Hulk Hogan, Cena is doubling down on just how serious he is about never donning the jorts for a match again after December 13.

“This has really never been done in WWE history. WWE Superstars don’t necessarily retire, they always kind of hang on for one more match. I am absolutely, 100% done on the 13th of December ... I will never wrestle again. You’ll be able to show this clip and call me a liar."

Thank you @jimmykimmel for my LAST late night show as an active @WWE performer. Excited for everyone to watch #SNME on Dec 13! @JimmyKimmelLive pic.twitter.com/QRb09cWnoe
— John Cena (@JohnCena) December 4, 2025

To be fair, being able to scream "LIAR!" at John Cena if he ever made a dramatic 'one last job' action hero style comeback does sound like a ton of fun, so here's hoping it actually happens.

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