Why WWE Risked It All With Gunther Winning John Cena's Last Match

I am the biggest proponent in the world of sending the fans home happy.

Too often, promotions, bookers, creative, whoever you want to put the onus on, well, they overthink it. Most of the time, when you have a layup in front of you, all you need to do is pop it off the backboard and through the hoop. All you need to do is deliver the moment.

John Cena defeating Gunther in the last match of his career would have indeed been a great moment. The ground rules were laid clearly before the nearly 20,000 fans in Washington, D.C., and they understood the assignment Saturday night: Gunther wanted to make their man give up, and they needed to will him one last time to the finish line by begging him not to. Surely, like he had done 1,818 times before across 23 years, Cena would overcome the hurdle before him.

Until he didn’t. At Saturday Night's Main Event, his final main event, John Cena gave up.

They chose jeers over cheers. In a year where WWE has often sacrificed long-term storybeats and character progression in favor of viral social media moments, Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s crew made one of its boldest decisions to date: use two decades of equity from one of wrestling’s most prolific headliners to try and create another one.

John Cena’s last match was great. Really great. While the stakes of the match itself were hampered by everyone knowing the 48-year-old would be retiring (in comparison to the likes of Ric Flair’s final WWE match, which was a rolling stipulation), WWE built a self-contained, digestible story for the future Hall of Famer’s final bout.

It was a main event straight out of Madison Square Garden in 1985, the big, bruising foreign heel weighing down the mighty babyface.

Throughout the last several months, Cena has spoken candidly about his body breaking down, a note that played well into Gunther physically strangling the life out of the 17-time world champion’s vessel. Each time he would reach down into his superhuman strength to reach for the jaws of life, he’d fall to consumption once again. His body, after 2,326 matches, quit. Resigned to his fate, he did as well.

There are certainly nuances to nitpick. Cena’s smile as he tapped (done to hit the aforementioned beat over the audience’s head) will more likely go the meme lore route than in his Hall of Fame video package. Gunther’s win would have been even more significant had the retirement stipulation been rolling rather than finite on this particular night. The build, while effective enough, would have benefited from more time to marinate and planning (much like a lot of Cena’s retirement run, but more on that shortly).

There is also proof of concept in what happens when you provide the retiring star the happy ending to go out on. Sting's pro wrestling farewell in 2024 made everyone feel good, though the foes in that match were in it under far different circumstances than the one in Cena's.

The Young Bucks are made men in the world of AEW. In WWE, despite being a former world champion with various in-ring accolades, Gunther is still on the rise. With his victory, he goes from being featured on the poster to being the guy in the middle of it.

Truthfully, having Cena win on his final night would not have been the wrong call. On one hand, it’s something we’ve seen so many times. On the other hand, the enigma that was once “Super Cena” has finally achieved near-universal appreciation from the fan base.

Yet, Cena is widely known these days as one of pro wrestling’s most selfless individuals, and if there was even a small chance of being able to pass along the stock that he built over 23 years of hustle, loyalty, and respect in a significant way, he was going to do it.

John Cena Has Retired. Now What?

What happens next with Gunther in WWE will be critical. | IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire

The polarizing nature of the end of Cena’s run (and career) does highlight what has been an extremely inconsistent year of storytelling for WWE. From WrestleMania season until today, 2025 has seen many WWE character arcs take convoluted paths, fall back on previous booking trails, or, in some cases, even get dropped entirely (looking at you, Ron Killings).

We have seen examples of little discipline and restraint, and connective tissue within stories and motivations has often been overlooked in favor of TikTok streamers gasping in shock.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Cena’s retirement run, in general, was not treated with the tender love and care that it deserved. It has been made clear on the record that the Elimination Chamber turn that saw Cena stun the world and “sell his soul” was a reactionary move. That part of this run will go down in pro wrestling infamy, and had it been anyone but Cena, it would have been a permanent stain on a performer’s legacy (even if they themselves had little to do with it).

Thankfully, the pivot to Cena turning at the end of the summer allowed for him to largely salvage what was left of his time. While nights like his squash loss at the hands of Brock Lesnar with no follow-up were extremely puzzling, the man who spent so many years battling the stigma of having held people down used his remaining time to shine the spotlight on the likes of Cody Rhodes, Dominik Mysterio, Logan Paul, and an underutilized AJ Styles. He wrestled with significantly more purpose and used his final outing to highlight one of the company’s most unique talents.

Gunther is also one of the victims of this year’s creative shortcomings. While the performer more than delivered every time he was tasked to, it is fair to question what the follow-up will be to the most significant win of his career. His value is embedded in his realism, but if you go to the well too many times with it in order to experiment with others (Jey Uso’s short-lived main event run followed by CM Punk’s even shorter-lived first title reign, for example), you run the risk of undercutting the character’s long-term equity.

That’s why it is imperative that this now becomes an underlying component of what makes Gunther, the character, who he is. Rarely do pro wrestling heels actually deliver on their promises. He did. The former world champion didn’t just tell people he was going to beat Cena in his final match; he told them exactly how he was going to do it. And it just so happened it was in a way so few have done before.

Baron Corbin forever wears the honor of beating Kurt Angle in Angle’s last match. But that achievement was largely meaningless in that it never became a defining trait of the character. Gunther now needs to be the career killer forever. He’s not only the guy who puts people out to pasture, but he also does so on his terms. I thought it was a major misstep not to at least even reference him sending Goldberg behind the shed earlier this year during the build to the Cena match.

Now, every opponent needs to be reminded that he killed Superman, be it through his words or by his actions. Gunther needs to, until the day he hangs up his own boots, be WWE’s Big Bad Wolf. Anything less than that would be a disservice to Cena's final selfless act. He is already one of wrestling’s most versatile performers, but the pressure is now heavier than ever for him to level up and be the industry’s top heel.

When Lesnar toppled The Undertaker’s undefeated streak, it received an extremely mixed reaction from across the industry, and is something still debated to this day. He was already a big box office draw as is. And while the execution of that paled in comparison to the quality of what we saw on Saturday night, Paul Heyman’s consistent reinforcement of what Lesnar had accomplished grew him into WWE’s top heel for a decade. It needs to be the same case here.

The reaction to the finish also tells a larger story about the direction of the industry, and specifically, WWE’s approach to it.

pic.twitter.com/tIoDiTsnyE
— Is this a work or shoot, brother? (@ShootOrWork) December 14, 2025

For the last two years, Levesque has taken on the role of being the public-facing representative of the company. Initiatives like the “WWE: Unreal” show offer fans a look into the creative process that’s never been given before, and are also intended to build goodwill for the people with the pen for when a story hits.

The issue with that, of course, is when a decision divides the fans. No longer is the majority of the ire pointed at the character. Instead, it falls on the booker. There has been a natural element of evolution to this, and while this is not a new concept to the Levesque era, the willingness to publicly lean into who is writing the stories then puts those same individuals in an extremely vulnerable position.

Were people more mad at Gunther for making their hero tap out, or were they more mad at the people who wrote Cena tapping out to Gunther?

Levesque has claimed on several occasions throughout the years that the story never ends in WWE. So as Cena’s comes to a close, it is more important than ever that WWE continues to tell the one that started on Saturday night.

Move over, Dwayne. Gunther is WWE’s “Final Boss” now. And if he’s not treated as such going forward?

Then maybe John Cena should have never given up.

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