We’ve talked about how a lot of people, myself included, maybe would have booked this last match differently, but the final analysis is that Triple H, Bruce Prichard and the guys would have gone to John and asked him. him that he wants to do.
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It sure seems like John wants to follow the time-honored tradition.
He put Brock Lesnar as a monster (again) at SummerSlam, then Dirty Dominik Mysterio as a master trickster at Survivor Series, and now, I hope, he’ll introduce Gunther as “The Ring General” this Saturday.
I’m almost sure that’s going to happen. The only question is whether John has asked to be left alone in the ring to say goodbye permanently, leave his shoes in the middle of the ring, or if the plan is to empty the locker room and have his family and friends celebrate with him.
Like everyone else in wrestling, I just want John to be happy with his last hour as an active professional wrestler.
Giving the final spot as Cena’s opponent to LA Knight, who lost the final of the Last Time Is Now Tournament to Gunther, would have been really interesting for me. The internet wrestling community “knew” that Gunther was going to be John’s final enemy for months, so a last-minute pivot would have been great.
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On the other hand, LA Knight is super popular and fans are desperate for him to win a big match (more on this later). Supporting Knight would have divided the crowd this Saturday, when the night demands that Cena have full support.
My friend, well, a member of my family, actually, Josh Alexander cut a huge promo to prepare for his big match against Swerve Strickland in the second half of AEW Winter’s Coming this Saturday in Cardiff, Wales.
He was there without Don Callis, who dresses terribly but is the best spokesperson in all of wrestling, and Josh did great.
Josh is one of the best wrestlers in the world and has been since breaking records for the TNA title. I’ll keep saying it and I’ll keep getting receipts when people inevitably text me. “Wow, you got it right with Josh.”
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Josh himself has told this story, but he was a fat kid who had no friends, lived miles and miles from his school, and spent nights and weekends alone, but he discovered TNA wrestling through a magazine his mother bought him.
He starts watching TNA, he loves it. He works up the courage to go to a local wrestling school…and makes a discovery. He hits himself on the back. He’s as good as anyone who’s been training for months. He tries more moves and learns them all quickly, very quickly.
Wrestling becomes his reason to get in shape. Wrestling becomes his life. He loves this sport as much as anyone in the crowd. I saw the talent from a million miles away and now AEW fans are seeing it too.
Back to LA Knight… to borrow from a popular phrase, your time is now.
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Knight received intimations of the superhuman treatment Monday night. He lost to Logan Paul, but Paul had help from Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed, and WWE’s mystery masked man. Then, backstage, he came back for more, and it took the best efforts of Paul and Reed to defeat him.
Paul literally told Reed, “He’s still getting up,” loud enough to be caught on camera.
That tells us exactly what WWE wanted us to think and feel.
Knight fans have long been upset that their “Megastar” hasn’t been given the biggest opportunities, but now I think WWE is deliberately leaning into that sentiment. If you’re mad that Knight keeps “eating pinfalls” (I hate that phrase), you’re experiencing the story the way WWE wants you to.
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Something big is coming for Knight.
(WWE via Getty Images)
You know the old saying: either we die young or we live old enough to become villains? John Cena, the character and the man who plays him, has done the complete opposite. He has been in the world for 26 years and that is enough time to become a universal hero.
Obviously, he was never a true villain (not even this year’s twist was enough to make him a villain), but he was the squeaky-clean hero that many hardcore fans loved to boo in the early and mid-2000s. Kids loved him, parents loved him, but hardcore fans who still yearned for the Attitude Era (say, 18- to 35-year-old men at the time) really loved booing him.
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For a long time, there was talk of turning it around because of those reactions. The way it has happened in Internet history is that WWE didn’t pull the trigger because John sold a lot of product and he didn’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
And I’m sure that influenced the decision. But also, WWE did a good job of analyzing whether this was just a minority of “too cool for school” guys having fun going against the grain or a legitimate movement where much of the audience rejected John.
WWE did it right. It’s not like PPV ratings and buy rates plummeted when Cena was on top.
It’s great to know that Darby Allin is now recovered from the injury he suffered on November 26 at “AEW Collision.” The daredevil was so beaten up after his fight with Kevin Knight that he was kept under observation in the hospital, but according to him, he is now fine and just waiting for medical clearance.
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As someone who went through the “just quit and then have a few beers to dull the pain” era, I’m always happy to see wrestling take injuries seriously in the modern era.
Fighters are tough guys. Even Darby admitted that they are saving him from himself, meaning he would be fighting hurt if it were up to him.
Darby’s place in the Golden League has been taken by Jack Perry, joining Kazuchika Okada, Kyle Fletcher, PAC, Mike Bailey and Knight.
Last night’s AEW Winter Is Coming special was one of the most charged episodes of wrestling television of 2026.
Congratulations to Athena, who crossed three years as Ring of Honor Women’s Champion yesterday. She won the title at ROH Final Battle on December 10, 2022 and has made over 30 defenses since then, including great matches against the likes of Thunder Rosa, Willow Nightingale, Mina Shirakawa and many more.
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Athena is fantastic to work with (she fought Gisele Shaw on one of my MLP shows) and so deserves her success. She went through a time when only TNA treated the women’s divisions with complete respect and fought hard for any problems that existed on the indies.
Now she is thriving and enjoying the product of all that she and a generation of female artists brought to the table.
In a time of falling role models, where it seems like almost everyone in public life is someone we wouldn’t want kids to look up to, John Cena is someone the wrestling industry should be very proud of.
And it has been for a quarter of a century.
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No drunk driving arrests, no scandals, not even a hint of anything improper in real life. He broke Hulk Hogan’s old record for most visits to Make-A-Wish and believe me, they are extremely difficult emotionally and mentally if you have any kind of heart. And John has a big heart.
And for WWE, he never abandoned them, never criticized them in interviews or complained about his place or anyone else’s. He even learned Mandarin because he identified that no one else in the company could speak the language and he needed someone who could.
Did the fans boo him out of the building? He never broke character. Did online critics mock your wrestling skills? He kept working and got better and better.
And he has crossed. He is mainstream. Legit acting skills and roles, great movies, HBO originals and, at least on my TV, he seems to be doing the voiceover for one in three commercials.
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And at the same time, he’s legitimately someone you feel good about because your kids look up to.
There will never be another like him.
Speaking of wrestlers and foreign languages, I can order food in five languages and know a handful of curse words in six and be fluent in maybe none, so I was impressed when Kenny Omega started speaking fluent Japanese.
Kenny came along with Don Callis, Anthem (TNA’s parent company) executive Ed Nordholm, and I when we met with New Japan Pro-Wrestling around November 2017. This was just a few weeks before Don and I were announced as heads of IMPACT (TNA) Wrestling and we wanted to tell them, “Hey, we want to reopen the partnership between TNA and New Japan.”
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And Kenny begins to speak Japanese not only fluently, but also so well that he makes the New Japan guys laugh out loud at his jokes. Anyone who speaks multiple languages will tell you that it is very difficult to master humor.
At one point, Kenny and the Japanese have been howling with laughter for three minutes straight, and Don and I say, “Tell us what’s so funny,” and Kenny says, “Yeah, it won’t translate that well.”
Around that time, the idea arose to return IMPACT Wrestling to the old TNA name. Obviously that finally happened years later, but it’s funny remembering someone suggested “Anthem Wrestling Entertainment.”
Can you even imagine the fun fans would have had with “AWE”? Fortunately, we stayed with IMPACT and, years later, we recovered the initials of TNA.
The D’Amore Drop is a weekly guest column on Uncrowned written by Scott D’Amore, the Canadian professional wrestling promoter, executive producer, trainer and former wrestler best known for his long-running role at TNA/IMPACT Wrestling, where he served as Chief Creative Officer. D’Amore is the current owner of the top Canadian promotion Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling.