Here's what we know about this booking disaster. Mind you, it's all mostly from Unreal so who knows how much of it is WWE lying>John Cena starts talking to WWE about a retirement tour all the way back in 2023, this is when Vince is still in charge>John says he can clear out his schedule to do a full year for WWE. WWE tells him they only need him for 36 appearances for some reason.>Announces it in 2024. By this point they must have already have some vague plans on what was going to happen>Ticket sales for EC aren't selling, so TKO gets the Rock to come in. Rock says he will only show up if there is a major angle otherwise it would be a waste. WWE agrees >Rock's idea is for Cody to turn heel, but there's other suggestions too. Someone throws out John Cena turning heel. They go with this literally on the fly, abandoning the previous plans they made>Travis Scott's agent knows someone at TKO so they get him involved>At this point, something fell through backstage. On Cody's podcast, John talks about how there were actually in fact plans up to SummerSlam but it didn't work out. This portion of the interview is heavily edited, implying there's NDAs in place>They abandon the heel turn abruptly because John says there was no time to do a redemption arc properly and fuck it, let's stop wasting the retirement tourBasically, John is throwing Rock under the bus for the entire thing.
>>19679005>drew giga dimes through his entire retirement run>kek what a failure on booking
Cena should be throwing Triple H under the bus for booking his retirement tour wholly wrong throughout 2025. That's who deserves all the blame, and it culminated in Hunter not allowing Cena to win his final match vs Gunther at SNME.honestly, Cena should just end his retirement, come back for one last real final match, and then beat Gunther at WrestleMania 42 because Gunther's not really benefitting from retiring Cena.if Austin Theory and Solo Sikoa couldn't fucking sustain the rub they got from working with Cena in previous years, then surely Gunther can't fucking sustain itplus Gunther's credibility as a Terminator-esque heel already went to shit after Pat McAfee emasculated Gunther at Backlash 2025.
>>19679005>booking disasterIt drew. Therefore it was good booking, no matter what smarks and dirtsheet writers think.
>>19679024WWE could book anything and still make money off of brainless edrones and saudis
>>19679009>made a lot of money in one year>causing a lot of viewers to lose interestVery good business there TKO
>>19679024>WWE made money off pooping in my mouth therefore it's good they pooped in my mouth
>>19679018Cena was always losing his final match. Face, heel, Gunther or Hornswoggle. He was the sports entertainment guy and he went out with a loss like a wrestler. That's the actual story.
>>19679018Ain't no way Gunther's going to benefit after already tapping to AJ, unless they just plan to turn him into Edge
>>19679054Cena was among one of the very few historical top WWE stars who helped them at a time when they were losing Austin and Rock, while Triple H and later Cena's supposed successor Roman Reigns wound up becoming disappointments as the main man.to that i say Cena earned the right to go out with his head held up high. getting to retire on your own terms and winning your final match is something only very few actual top stars get the privilege of attaining.
Cena stated they had it all laid out then the Rock thing took it off track. He was supposed to only have one match with Cody at WM, as he himself stated. Him turning back face was them getting it back on track and from then on it was him and HHH putting it together and Cena wanted to iust build for the future and lose his last match. The only thing they didn't plan was the Brock match as Cody was supposed to lose to Drew but Fatu was injured so TKO made the call for Brock to beat Cena to be the moment for the first ESPN PPV
>>19679136Cena did not want to win.
>>19679170Cena should've strong armed Triple H into letting him win his final match vs Gunther at SNME. you can keep making excuses for Triple H's dogshit booking all you want, but the fact of the matter is, Hunter intentionally fucked over Cena and his retirement tour on purpose.
>>19679009>profit = quality
>>19679018Gunther was never going be elevated from retiring Cena because that version of Cena is an old washed bitch that gets pinned by Solo and Theory
>>19679154It's a shame that Cena is a soulless corporate robot with PR speak and Rock would sue his ass into oblivion because I really want to know what his actual thoughts are on the Rock after the stunt he pulled
>>19679183Where did I make excuses for Triple H's booking? I never even mentioned Triple H. All I said was that Cena wanted to lose. And if Cena wanted to lose why would he strong arm Triple H into a win? Cena got to go out how he wanted (something Triple H never got to do) and was the bigger man in this ordeal. Cena won.
>>19679005lol people said vince was losing his mind then wwe let's this total shit happen I'm embarrassed just looking at that image
>>19679239That image explains everything wrong with the triple h era, rock and travis scott attacking cody was never explained on wwe tv and cena never needed to turn heel
>>19679005>>Rock's idea is for Cody to turn heel, but there's other suggestions tooRock actually suggested giving Owens the belt. His idea was way better than what happened but he still gets all the blame. Retarded as fuck.
>>19679253The IWC only used Rock as a scapegoat because they didn’t want to admit how ass Triple H’s booking is
>>19679018you are unironically a worked bitch kek
>>19679202>soulless corporate robotCena could've gone to TKO to throw Triple H under the bus for how wrong he handled Cena's retirement tour, but Cena doesn't want to do that because he's too much of a class act as a person to be trashing people like that.
>>19679466>TMZsorry, not TKO. I meant TMZ. Cena could've gone to the paparazzis of TMZ and spilled the beans on Hunter, but again, Cena doesn't want to trash the modern day WWE management because he's too much of a class act like I said.
>>19679183>retiree should win his final matchYou don't understand the business
>>19679154>>19679202>it's Rocky's faultHi Paul.
>>19679005It was A Sngroli Oat idea
>>19679193>this wrestler is dimes>actually making money is a bad thing
>>19679037people were always going to lose interest once cena left.it's like how football will have less interest when messi & ronaldo retire
>>19679253>Rock pitches for Cody to turn heel, as confirmes by WWE itself in their programming>Gets turned down so Rock pitches someone randomly beating Cody and taking the title, ruining Cody's reign and the Cena feud they were going into, right before Mania>Rock clearly just wanted to fuk over Cody anyway possible>This is all HHH's fault because I don't like him and I like Rock!k
>>19679005>>John says he can clear out his schedule to do a full year for WWE.Well there's the first lie. Hollywood doesn't book John Cena unless he's ready to give his usual turbo head for a bit part in slop
>>19679024It didn't. Tickets not selling. Panic mode. Release fake Netflix numbers. Scroll through the menu, land on WWE for the preview. Oh!! That counts!!! Views are up! Add that up with the view time, and no one even watches the full show.
>>19679005You could have easily done a logical heel turn without the rock’s further involvement, just focus on Cena’s obsession with getting 17 at all costs and the fact that he hadn’t won a singles match in however many years prior to that. They even foreshadowed it somewhat with Cena mentioning how him getting to 17 was ‘best for business’. You could have even had Scott be Rock’s factotum if you really needed to have his involvement and Dwayne didn’t want to show up. At the end I think Cena said ‘eh fuck it’ when he offered to work a full time schedule and they rebuffed him, and HHH is still probably salty that this guy was orders of magnitude more over than he ever was, got a retirement tour when his last match was a tag on a nothing house show. I think this lead to a perfect storm where both sides half assed the angle and did the bare minimum .
>>19683313maybe not as much if they'd spent his retirement building up new stars and starting interesting storylines rather than giving the win to a chickenshit bitch
I think Cody/Cena was always going to happen at WM. I guess Cena would have just lost here and put Cody over. The story for Cena's last year would have perhaps been chasing the 17. Rumble, Chamber, Mania, MitB, Summerslam where he defeats Gunther or whoever. Short run as champ, does some nostalgia matches, dream matches and drops it. Wraps the year up with a victory in Boston. 36 dates really hurt what they could have done with him.
>>19683433It could have simply been Cena turns heel at Mania to beat Cody instead of turning at Chamber. He'd turn face for Summerslam after battling his psyche, win a match or two as face and then drop it back to Cody in October or something.
>>19679005Rock's powerplay failed again and he took his ball and went home. At this point it's quite clear he does not like Cody because of WM40 and wanted to insert himself into his title reign as his boss to lower his stock
