{"id":209092,"date":"2025-12-21T19:56:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=209092"},"modified":"2025-12-22T20:14:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T02:14:49","slug":"john-cena-said-he-had-epiphany-about-wrestling-the-day-before-his-wwe-retirement-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2025\/12\/21\/john-cena-said-he-had-epiphany-about-wrestling-the-day-before-his-wwe-retirement-match\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cena says he had epiphany about wrestling the day before his WWE retirement match"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-3171250683\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>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&#8217;s Main Event.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The epiphany was crazy, right and it\u2019s just an example of like, let\u2019s never stop learning,\u201d Cena said during his appearance on Cody Rhodes&#8217;s<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/john-cenas-first-interview-after-retiring\/id1816989347?i=1000741885798\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> &#8220;What Do You Wanna Talk About?&#8221;<\/a> podcast. \u201cThis is Friday, I get this, like, \u2018Holy s&#8212;, I found a way to say what I\u2019m actually feeling.\u2019 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\u2019s those moments where you do action \u2014 it\u2019s your piece of the conversation and then you slow down to allow the arena to have their piece of the conversation. I\u2019m like, \u2018Holy s&#8212;. I think I can finally articulate what\u2019s up here to a\u00a0 (NXT wrestler) Je\u2019Von Evans at 21 years old.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBe like, \u2018Je\u2019Von, if I talk to you for 45 minutes, you\u2019re not going to care, but if we can talk, if you can tell me what\u2019s 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.\u2019 You know what I\u2019m saying? Where I don\u2019t have to say, \u2018Slow down, kid. You\u2019re going too fast.\u2019 That immediately puts you on the defensive. \u2018Slow down? You can\u2019t keep up, old man.\u2019 It\u2019s not about that. You\u2019re 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/fannation\/wrestling\/wwe\/john-cena-signs-new-contract-with-wwe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ambassador<\/a>\u00a0for WWE. He retires from WWE as a record setting 17 time world champion.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-363460768\"><div id=\"pwtor-2638981655\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>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&#8217;s Main Event. &#8220;The epiphany was <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2025\/12\/21\/john-cena-said-he-had-epiphany-about-wrestling-the-day-before-his-wwe-retirement-match\/\" title=\"John Cena says he had epiphany about wrestling the day before his WWE retirement match\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":202560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prowrestlingnews","category-news_wwe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-10-at-12.00.38-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209129,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209092\/revisions\/209129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}