It’s easy to forget these days that actor John Cena has his roots elsewhere — but the now beloved movie star recently opened up about whether or not he’d ever return to the WWE after his upcoming retirement tour.
“There is no way,” Cena recently revealed on Good Morning America. “There is absolutely… I don’t want to speak in absolutes, because I don’t want to close any opportunity, but I made a promise to the fans who’ve allowed me to be here for a quarter of a century. They allowed me to sit with you today. I wouldn’t want to disrespect them like that. This is an event — when people attend, it’s very exclusive.”
The wrestler, who is considered one of the greatest of all time, also noted that he didn’t want to “ruin” the connection he’s built with fans throughout his career for the “selfish gain” of picking back up again after announcing his decision to step back from the sport.
“Speaking to a retired athlete, I think you intrinsically know when your instinct says, ‘I’m a step slower.’ It’s then just a battle of, ‘How long do I fight those red flags before it could be counterproductive?'” Cena said of the end of his 25-year career. “I still look good, I still feel good, I still feel like I can perform at a WWE level, but I also think it’s time for me to step aside and let the young talent step forward.”
That said, he “wanted to do something that’s never been done” to mark the final stage of his wrestling life, so he set out on a massive goodbye tour.
“I said for the year I’d perform in 36 states,” he told the audience at GMA. “We’re halfway through, and I think nobody thought I was serious. And now that we’re halfway through and people really understand that my last match is in December and it’s time for me to move on, the audiences have been electric.”
In March, we reported on how John Cena followed up his shock heel turn at WWE Elimination Chamber by posting a Grand Theft Auto 6 image on social media, showing he was well aware of the meme.
For the uninitiated, the 12-year wait for Rockstar to release GTA 6 has spawned a meme in which people highlight the surprising things they got before GTA 6’s release date.
In this case, it was a John Cena heel turn — his first in 20 years and a narrative shift many thought would never happen. To put it in other words, Cena, the WWE’s superstar ‘good guy,’ the Make-A-Wish world record holder and all-round much-loved wrestler and actor, became a WWE ‘bad guy’ before we got GTA 6.
Cena will wrestle his final bout before retirement in December. As for his acting career, he can be seen next in the upcoming action comedy Heads of State, which will be released on July 2 on Prime, and then in Peacemaker Season 2 on August 21.
Photo by Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
