Cody Rhodes Wants to Wrestle John Cena During His WWE Retirement Tour

Cena's farewell tour kicks off in January.

By Liam Crowley

John Cena is about to embark on his farewell tour. This past July at WWE Money in the Bank, Big Match John announced that 2025 would mark the final year of his in-ring career. Cena is making an added effort to have that final year be a full 12 months, as he has noted that himself and WWE are looking at a range of 30-40 dates in 2025. Among those dates will be WWE Royal Rumble, WWE Elimination Chamber, and WWE WrestleMania. Who stands opposite Cena in the squared circle remains to be seen, as the 16-time world champion himself has stressed that he will not be hand-picking any opponents next year.

Cody Rhodes Wants to Wrestle John Cena in 2025

CODY-RHODES-JOHN-CENA-WWE
(Photo: WWE)

The American Nightmare has his sights on Big Match John.

Speaking during a live signing at Fanatics Fest NYC, WWE Champion Cody Rhodes called the prospect of wrestling John Cena "the honor of [his] life" during his farewell tour next year.

"It would be the honor of my life to wrestle John Cena in any capacity. He's the GOAT for a reason," Rhodes said. "We get to live in this era, and he's definitely a man of his word. When he says it's farewell, it truly is farewell. If you have the farewell tour t-shirt, go and get it, this is it. I drove John around for a year and I learned everything I possibly could. Didn't realize I was learning so much at the time."

Rhodes and Cena have locked up four times, with their first bout coming in 2009. They most recently wrestled in 2015 when Rhodes, wrestling as Stardust at the time, answered Cena's WWE United States Championship open challenge.

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While Cena has never wrestled the American Nightmare version of Rhodes, the two have had a couple of encounters over the past few years. Cena introduced Rhodes to a WWE Monday Night Raw crowd in March 2022 and joined in on his WWE Championship celebration at WWE WrestleMania 40 this past April.

"I told him in the ring last night, when I got to embrace him, he had the championship in his right hand. I said, 'Do you feel that?' I said, 'Do you feel how heavy it is?' He said yes, [and] I said it will get heavier every day," Cena said of what he told Rhodes at WWE WrestleMania 40. "Because that is the burden you bear of trying to craft the path to being the greatest of all time. I hope a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, we can all sit here and be an advocate that Cody Rhodes is the greatest of all time. Because that's the way it should work."

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