I don't believe the conspiracy theory floating around that Cena wasn't supposed to tap, but did so to signify his distaste for how WWE treated his retirement tour. But if he did, I can't exactly blame him. So much wasted potential.

Or hell, let's dream up an ideal world scenario: Cena finally defeats Lesnar decisively and they both leave. Cena makes goodwill appearances and a Hall of Fame induction, and Lesnar is Never. Heard. From. Again.

Finally, this one’s controversial, but AEW did it well with Sting: go out with a final win. Frankly this is what should have happened to Gunther. They have zero history, Gunther is an established veteran main eventer. He loses nothing giving Cena a win to celebrate on his way out.

Second: have your final match against one of your best rivals if they’re still around. Someone like Miz, Randy Orton, or AJ Styles would have worked. Or hell, stop being cowards and negotiate with AEW to get Edge for one night.

How should it have gone, then?

To me, there’s basically three ways to do a wrestling retirement well.

First: Lose to a young talent to put them over. Gunther doesn’t fit here. He's not young and he has a lot of WWE history. Someone like Oba Femi, Trick Williams, or even Joe Hendry would be better

And it doesn't help that 75% of the retirement tour was done poorly. The pointless heel turn thanks to the Rock abandoning it, too many pointless matches including another goddamn Lesnar loss, and a tournament for his last opponent that was badly executed.

First off, I’m on team “This sucked”. Not cause of the loss, but Cena is Mr. “Never-Give-Up”. Even in his final match, tapping out feels like a betrayal of all the character stood for. He should have passed out from the hold or taken a pinfall after taking so much offense his body gives out.

One complaint I often heard about the defender was that since you could heal it with a cantrip, it was basically a neverending HP sink. They removed Mending working on it, but Healing Word and Cure Wounds also lost the language about not working on constructs. I think that's a better setup for it.

WOTC: Rangers basically have to concentrate on Hunter's Mark at all times now
Players: We absolutely hate this
WOTC: Understood. Here's a new Artificer that does the same thing with Faerie Fire
Players: 🤬

I think for 2026 I wanna do another character creation challenge. it turned out to be quite good for my mental health.

Am very glad they put in things to ameliorate the loss of the ability to infuse the various parts of the armor. That was my big complaint from the UA versions.

(the joke is that it's a firefox)

we have one collective brain cell