July 15, 2024 Observer Newsletter: John Cena to retire, Stephanie Vaquer signs WWE deal

By Dave Meltzer
Published: 12 Jul 2024, 05:49

Subscribers can now read this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter with a lead story of John Cena announcing his impending retirement and a long farewell tour:

“John Cena, one of the biggest pro wrestling stars in history, announced at the 7/6 Money in the Bank show, that he would be retiring from pro wrestling, although not right now.

Cena has talked in interviews for some time about his time left in the business not being long. He had been very careful in the ring in recent years when doing occasional matches. He had said that he would definitely never wrestle after the age of 50, but this announcement seemed to cut back on that timetable by two years. It’s very clear the company and he figured that next year was the right time for a retirement tour, both to help kick off the partnership with Netflix and his being able to physically perform at the level necessary for the number of shows they are looking at doing.

Because of Cena’s acting fame, this announcement was the very rare situation where something in pro wrestling was covered as a major news story. For the next two days, news channels were covering it as a serious news story, noting in particular his “Peacemaker” character and pushing that next year would be his last WrestleMania, which in and of itself will make next year’s Mania the biggest of all-time. Retirements of Ric Flair, Undertaker and others that were at WrestleMania never broke through as one of the leading news stories of the day. On national news radio for the top of the hour top few news stories that were covered, the Cena retirement announcement was mentioned as one of the few stories covered along with weather-related news issues and the presidential race.”