John Cena’s retirement tour kicked off in January of 2025 and throughout the year he faced off against some of his biggest rivals. At the WWE Crown Jewel premium live event back in October, John Cena faced off against AJ Styles one last time, but he was originally supposed to face a different opponent.
While talking about the trajectory of his retirement tour on the No Contest Wrestling podcast Cena explained that he was supposed to face Drew McIntyre at Crown Jewel, but the decision was made to go with AJ in order to give the fans a feel good moment.
“In the whole story arc, I tried to plan it as a year of creative experiences. But you’ve also got to be able to pivot. You don’t have Rock. You don’t have Travis (Scott). We’re going to do this. AJ was supposed to be Drew (McIntyre). But it pivoted.
We want to give them a feel-good moment because we’re listening to the data points. They listen to you guys. They do. It’s real. But if we tell you then you’ll say something else, and it might not be authentic.
So you have the Brock (Lesnar) moment — people are pissed off. Then you have the AJ moment — things are great. And then you have this three-appearance run with Dom (Mysterio), which is fun.
Hometown boy wins in his hometown, gets the hits for the cycle. You can’t write it better than that. Then you go to San Diego, he gets his payback, but Liv (Morgan) comes back. We involve every person we possibly can.
Then the Ring General (Gunther). Here’s what I want to say about that, too, the show doesn’t stop when I’m done. I’m the first character who’s been killed off. That’s what was hard. People were like, ‘What the f***?’ No, my character was killed off. No one ever gets killed off because no one ever closes the door.”