John Cena Reveals He Began Planning WWE Retirement Years Ago

This upcoming weekend, John Cena will officially retire from professional wrestling at Saturday Night's Main Event after conducting a year-long farewell tour at the beginning of 2025. Cena first announced the tour at Money In The Bank in Toronto, Canada in 2024, but according to the 17-time World Champion during a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet on "Insight," his retirement plans for this year had been discussed long before the Premium Live Event.

"About another year and a half. So the whole thing was like 3 years. ... By then, I knew I had a lot of opportunities outside of WWE and those are very difficult to balance. Not just being everywhere – the first half of this year for the tour, I was flying back and forth to Budapest and Morocco, making PLE dates and man, I literally left Intuit [on January 6] ... to land in Budapest to shoot the next day. That's a scheduling thing. The biggest hurdle to climb is insurance, and insurance is super pricey, like every date the cost goes up."

Cena continued to speak about insurance, stating that trying to avoid injury while wrestling was a main priority for him throughout 2025 because getting hurt in the ring would result in any film or TV roles to be put on pause until he's healthy. He also explained that getting a film studio to agree to allow him wrestle at the same time as shooting a movie can be impossible, and has often had to pay out of pocket for insurance.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Insight" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.