{"id":148298,"date":"2025-12-10T10:02:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T15:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=148298"},"modified":"2026-01-20T19:48:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T00:48:49","slug":"john-cena-reveals-why-he-lost-to-brock-lesnar-at-wwe-wrestlepalooza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/12\/10\/john-cena-reveals-why-he-lost-to-brock-lesnar-at-wwe-wrestlepalooza\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cena Reveals Why He Lost to Brock Lesnar at WWE Wrestlepalooza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WWE Wrestlepalooza was the first premium live event to stream on ESPN this year. It was a big event for both companies, and WWE treated it as such as well. One of the biggest rivalries going into the show was between Brock Lesnar and John Cena. Both are top stars in WWE, and the last time they wrestled one-on-one was at Night of Champions 2014, where Cena won via disqualification.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of fans expected Cena to win this match, considering he was in his final year in wrestling, and nobody expected him to lose this close to his retirement. At WrestlePalooza, WWE surprised fans when Lesnar beat Cena. People were upset and wanted to know why.<\/p>\n<p>John Cena recently talked about this match during an interview, and here&#8217;s what he had to say.<\/p>\n<h2>John Cena Says Losing To Brock Lesnar Doesn&#8217;t Hurt Him<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Cena On His Heel Turn, Farewell Tour, The Rock, Fav Matches, 17th Championship, Brock Lesnar\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Gh1Gzek4Vlw?start=8&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Speaking on Chris Van Vliet&#8217;s podcast, John Cena said that losing to Brock Lesnar doesn&#8217;t hurt him in any way because he&#8217;s already retiring this year. Cena hinted that Brock might be retiring soon. He said it&#8217;s likely going to happen in Minnesota, and fans might be aware that Summerslam 2026 is happening in Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>It was Lesnar&#8217;s return match, and the spotlight was on him, which seems like this is why he won that night. The Cenation Leader said;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>\u201cAgain, I love the public\u2019s ability to weigh in. You have this guy who\u2019s returning, who absolutely looks like he hasn\u2019t aged a day, moves like it. He can split his pants and still move like a ballerina, slip on his Pyro and do a ninja roll and be okay. He\u2019s a Beast. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>It\u2019s his first time back. I\u2019ve been in this seat before. It\u2019s like I\u2019m always in the seat when Brock comes back, Rock after Miami, who\u2019s the next guy? SummerSlam with Roman, here he comes again. After he beats &#8216;Taker for the streak, I\u2019ve sat in this seat before. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>You have to figure out who gets the shine that night. And if in his return, again, only my perspective. This attraction where we are going to build until he goes into the sunset, which is, I think, in Minnesota? Creatively, it\u2019s very soon. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>To create a mountain to climb for someone, you have to build the mountain. And I\u2019m on my way out. It\u2019s not like it\u2019s gonna hurt me, but I\u2019m a viable commodity, and it\u2019s a great main event. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>See these two titans for the last time, and it\u2019s okay. Sometimes your team gets blown out. We were first on the program. I did the best I could. We all did the best we could to make it a competitive fight into the middle. People forget I was in that arena when Brock fell down for the first time on the shoulder tackle, and then I was able to give them all the stuff. They were into it, and then just a bunch of gratuitous F5s. That\u2019s how you build Brock.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>[Chris asks if the idea was to have Lesnar win because he can&#8217;t lose] No, I think the idea is he&#8217;s Brock Lesnar. That&#8217;s the idea. So when the night is about Brock, I don&#8217;t swim upstream because there&#8217;s been nights that have been about me.<em>\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lesnar&#8217;s retirement rumors have been\u00a0a thing\u00a0for years now. During an <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.f4wonline.com\/news\/wwe\/brock-lesnar-on-wwe-future-i-dont-know-how-long-im-gonna-be-around\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">interview with Daniel Cormier<\/a> a few years back, Lesnar said that he had retired after his WWE Championship match against Drew McIntyre at WrestleMania 36. It wasn&#8217;t until Vince called that Lesnar decided to return again.<\/p>\n<p>In just a few days, John Cena will also step into the ring for one final time. His last match will take place at Saturday Night&#8217;s Main Event, where he&#8217;ll go up against Gunther.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Bill Simmons and provide an H\/T to LastWordOnSports.com.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><i>Header photo \u2013 WWE \u2013<\/i>\u00a0<i>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\"><i>Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0for more on John Cena\u00a0<\/i><i>and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out WWE programming on<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81788927\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u00a0<i>Netflix<\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0(Raw),\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usanetwork.com\/wwe-friday-night-smackdown\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>USA Network<\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0(SmackDown),\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cwtv.com\/shows\/wwe-nxt\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>The CW<\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0(NXT), and\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>Peacock<\/i><\/a><i>\u00a0(archives and premium live event streaming). You can follow WWE on social media and relive top moments on\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@WWE\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>YouTube<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WWE Wrestlepalooza was the first premium live event to stream on ESPN this year. It was a big event for both companies, and WWE treated it as such as well. One of the biggest rivalries going into the show was between Brock Lesnar and John Cena. Both are top stars in WWE, and the last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5645,"featured_media":148302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[57,165],"class_list":["post-148298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wwe-universe","tag-brock-lesnar","tag-john-cena"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151218,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148298\/revisions\/151218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}