John Cena has been more or less regular on WWE programming since the beginning of his retirement tour in the early phase of 2025. In recent times, he has not appeared on television since Night of Champions’ title defense in Saudi Arabia against CM Punk, and the sporadic appearances should continue for the next few weeks as WWE heads into the biggest event of the summer, SummerSlam.
As of this writing, the next appearance for John Cena on WWE TV will be on the July 18 episode of SmackDown. After that, he’s scheduled to appear on the August 1st episode of SmackDown, which will be the go-home edition of the show for SummerSlam. That being said, the top champion in the WWE will be seen on only two shows before the main event match of the summer PLE.
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On August 3rd, at the PLE, John Cena will defend the WWE Title against King of the Ring winner Cody Rhodes in the main event of SummerSlam 2025 – Night Two at the MetLife Stadium, a match that was already confirmed last week on Smackdown. Via Seth Rollins’ interference, he last retained the Undisputed WWE Championship against Punk at Night of Champions.
Reports affirm that John Cena will make only two television appearances on the road to WWE’s biggest event of the summer since he’s busy filming the upcoming Netflix movie “Little Brother” with Eric André in New Jersey. He’s also been on the road for the past few days for the latest Amazon Prime movie, Heads of State, alongside Idris Alba and Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
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Drew McIntyre not interested in facing John Cena in a singles contest
With only a limited number of appearances reserved until December, only a handful of names will likely be able to square off with him in his last few matches. Recently, Drew McIntyre was asked to face him for the first and last time in a singles contest, but he’s seemingly not interested in this. Speaking in an interview with Sports Illustrated, he showed interest in becoming WWE Champion,
“I’ve never had a singles match with Cena. (He’s) been ducking me his entire career. Don’t know why. He tore CM Punk apart that one week on the microphone with a pipebomb. I enjoyed it, and I was like, ‘God, I’d love to come back at Cena on the microphone.’ But he’s not the same John Cena. He’s a little b*tch these days.”