John Cena has given every indication that he is happily retired from wrestling after hanging up his boots following a defeat
to Gunther in December 2025. However, he recently revealed that he once thought his last match had taken place years before at WrestleMania 36.During that 2020 premium live event, Cena faced Bray Wyatt in a “Firefly Fun House” match.
“Honestly, no kidding,” Cena said in an interview with the U.K.‘s Metro published on Wednesday (September 2). “I thought the Firefly Fun House
was going to be the last match of my career.”
At the time, Cena’s career in Hollywood was really taking off, and he had become “pretty unavailable for WWE.”
The encounter with the late Wyatt at WrestleMania certainly would have been a suiting end to his celebrated career. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WWE had to shift plans and turn the bout into a cinematic match. What fans ended up viewing featured many references to Cena’s career as well as a kind of spiritual death of the star before his defeat to Wyatt.
“I really did think that the Firefly Fun House match was going to be the tail end, and that was kind of a meta journey for me through facing all of my demons, and then letting go,” he told Metro.
Cageside Seats’ own Sean Rueter agreed with Cena when he assessed the match in 2020. Rueter wrote that “to make the Firefly Fun House Match something more than just an oddity, a bold attempt at something different WWE probably wouldn’t have allowed Wyatt & Cena to even attempt in any other year, it has to have meaning. It used the last 20+ years of wrestling history to tell a story, and that story should have repercussions for the future.
“We should never see John Cena in WWE ever again.”
Of course, we did see Cena again, and he continued his time in the ring for another five years after his memorable match with Bray.
His final year in WWE was promoted heavily as his retirement tour, which featured high points, such as his last face-off against AJ Styles, as well as some regrettable moments, like the heel turn that WWE abandoned without much thought. A record-setting 17th world championship also made sure his last year would not soon be forgotten.
What do you think, Cagesiders? Should Cena have called it a career after WrestleMania 36? When would you have wanted him to retire? Let us know in the comments.
