“My face starts turning red” – John Cena legitimately attacked a former WWE Superstar

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Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Masters shared the story of how John Cena “shoot” on him with the STFU.

“It was a shoot STFU. I mean, again, I’m not saying that Cena was purposely doing it to shoot on me. I used to think sometimes with Cena, he got so fired up in the moment that he wouldn’t even know his own strength type of thing. So, yeah, he did it to me for a shoot. You’ll see my face starts turning red, I start trying to get it a little bit looser. I’m pretty sure that I heard later on that he was working with Kurt, and Kurt had to tell him to loosen it up a little bit,” Masters said. [H/T chrisvanvliet.com]

While John Cena initially used the STFU out of necessity to win a Submission Match, it became a part of his arsenal. He has won countless of matches for the rest of his career.

John Cena tapped out in his final WWE match

On December 13, 2025, John Cena faced Gunther in his retirement match at Saturday Night’s Main Event in Washington, D.C. Cena gave his all to beat The Ring General, but it wasn’t enough.

Gunther had Cena tight in a sleeper hold, forcing the man who preached to “never give up” to tap out. The result of the match wasn’t surprising, but the way Cena lost was received poorly by the WWE Universe.

Nevertheless, Cena was alright with the decision based on his post-retirement interviews. Gunther went on to add AJ Styles’ career to his resume, retiring The Phenomenal One more than a month later at the Royal Rumble.