John Cena may be preparing to embark on the ultimate retirement tour in WWE, but the idea of a farewell tour doesn’t appeal to Batista.
Cena will kick off his retirement tour with the first Monday Night RAW of 2025 which will also mark the red brand’s first show on Netflix.
On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, Batista spoke about Cena’s tour and why he wouldn’t be interested in the same. He said,
“I get along with John. I respect John a lot, a lot more than people think I do for some reason. I think the internet and I think fans have built this rivalry between us, which there really isn’t, but this is how we’re different. I would never do this [retirement tour]. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t.
“It would feel disingenuous to me to go around and I just couldn’t. But where I see his point where he wants to go around and he wants to personally thank all the fans, but there’s just something in me where I just couldn’t do it. It would feel uncomfortable to me, accolades feel uncomfortable to me. I could never be the type of babyface who was saying good stuff because I wanted to get the crowd to cheer for me. I couldn’t be that guy.
“So I love and respect what he’s doing with his whole tour to say thank you to the fans, but we’re just different that way. I couldn’t do it. I went out the way I wanted. I retired the way I wanted. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I announced my retirement on Instagram and I knew I was going to do it. I just didn’t want to tell anybody I was going to do it because I didn’t want anybody to say, no, no, you got to come in, you got to give a speech, you know, the fans. I don’t know, just something about it would have felt false to me. I couldn’t do it.”
Batista’s final match came at WWE WrestleMania 35 where he was defeated by Triple H. Had The Game lost, he would have been forced to retire from wrestling.
The Animal was announced for the 2020 WWE Hall of Fame but later withdrew due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has yet to be inducted.
