{"id":148992,"date":"2025-12-18T16:27:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=148992"},"modified":"2026-01-20T19:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T00:33:09","slug":"john-cena-explains-the-emotional-reason-he-smiled-before-tapping-out-to-gunther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/12\/18\/john-cena-explains-the-emotional-reason-he-smiled-before-tapping-out-to-gunther\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cena Explains the Emotional Reason He Smiled before Tapping Out to Gunther"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When John Cena tapped out at Saturday Night&#8217;s Main Event against Gunther, he had a smile on his face. A lot of fans were confused about this, and they wanted to know what this meant.<\/p>\n<p>Someone like Cena, who has always preached the message of Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect, was &#8216;giving up&#8217; in his final match? Well, not exactly as Cena explained in a recent interview with Cody Rhodes (his first since retirement).<\/p>\n<h2>John Cena Explains The Meaning Behind His Smile At SNME<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Cena\u2019s first interview after retiring | What Do You Wanna Talk About? With Cody Rhodes\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NSUgyaxzbnA?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 Rhodes&#8217; <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NSUgyaxzbnA&amp;t=8s\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">What Do You Wanna Talk About?<\/a> podcast, Cena explained that his tapping out was his moment of taking one &#8220;last breath&#8221; and going out peacefully.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>&#8220;For the last five minutes, everything I preach about story and drama and having a conversation with the audience. The ones I love are in the front row. I know my colleagues are watching on the monitor back there. We&#8217;re just in a Sleeperhold, man, but we&#8217;re having that conversation with the audience. As I essentially take my last breath, I have struggled. If you think of somebody, the natural causes scenario or however we picture loss in our life, all of us have been through it. They struggle. They hang on just long enough to make sure to say goodbye to everybody that&#8217;s been meaningful in their lives, and that whole day was so many unbelievably vulnerable, meaningful conversations. Then you realize, I&#8217;ve connected with everybody I love. Physically, I feel great. I think it&#8217;s time to take that last breath, and that&#8217;s that. I hate to keep going back morbidly to obituaries, but like, &#8216;This person died peacefully.&#8217; Knowing that like, &#8216;Man, we are in a good place. We&#8217;re going to be great going forward.&#8217; The bottom of the t-shirt says &#8216;I gave everything, thank you for everything. And in that one moment, that was that. Going peacefully.'&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This was Cena&#8217;s first interview since his wrestling retirement. Even in the interview, Cena said that he is completely done with wrestling and will never wrestle again.<\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Header photo \u2013 WWE \u2013<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stay tuned to the <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for more on John Cena a<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nd 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<\/span><\/i><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81788927\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Netflix<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Raw), <\/span><\/i><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.usanetwork.com\/wwe-friday-night-smackdown\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">USA Network<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (SmackDown), <\/span><\/i><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.cwtv.com\/shows\/wwe-nxt\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The CW<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (NXT), and <\/span><\/i><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Peacock<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (archives and premium live event streaming). You can follow WWE on social media and relive top moments on <\/span><\/i><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@WWE\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">YouTube<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When John Cena tapped out at Saturday Night&#8217;s Main Event against Gunther, he had a smile on his face. A lot of fans were confused about this, and they wanted to know what this meant. Someone like Cena, who has always preached the message of Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect, was &#8216;giving up&#8217; in his final [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5645,"featured_media":148306,"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":[12,2192,1,3],"tags":[98,165],"class_list":["post-148992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-uncategorized","category-wwe-universe","tag-cody-rhodes","tag-john-cena"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148992","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=148992"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151213,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148992\/revisions\/151213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}