John Cena said he had epiphany about wrestling the day before his WWE retirement match

John Cena said he had an epiphany that wrestling is about having a conversation with audience the day before his retirement match against Gunther on Dec. 13 at Saturday Night’s Main Event.

“The epiphany was crazy, right and it’s just an example of like, let’s never stop learning,” Cena said during his appearance on Cody Rhodes’s “What Do You Wanna Talk About?” podcast. “This is Friday, I get this, like, ‘Holy s—, I found a way to say what I’m actually feeling.’ I was just reading through a book and it was about the ability to have fierce conversations and you want to, you want to let everybody contribute. You want to have a conversation and they were talking about the power of the pause and the silence, essentially slowing down. It’s those moments where you do action — it’s your piece of the conversation and then you slow down to allow the arena to have their piece of the conversation. I’m like, ‘Holy s—. I think I can finally articulate what’s up here to a  (NXT wrestler) Je’Von Evans at 21 years old.’

“Be like, ‘Je’Von, if I talk to you for 45 minutes, you’re not going to care, but if we can talk, if you can tell me what’s on your mind and I can talk to you and then maybe we both walk away having grown a little bit. Just make sure you do that in your matches.’ You know what I’m saying? Where I don’t have to say, ‘Slow down, kid. You’re going too fast.’ That immediately puts you on the defensive. ‘Slow down? You can’t keep up, old man.’ It’s not about that. You’re going to feel it when you feel it. But now you got a chip on your shoulder to prove me wrong and prove working fast is going to work.”

Cena lost his retirement match to Gunther at SNME via submission when he tapped out. In addition to resuming his acting career full-time moving forward, Cena announced on Dec. 9 prior to his retirement match that he had signed a new five year deal to be an ambassador for WWE. He retires from WWE as a record setting 17 time world champion.