The Last Time Is Now is just two days away, and it seems like John Cena will go out on his shield against Gunther.

We’ve talked about how a lot of people, myself included, would’ve maybe booked this last match differently, but the final analysis is Triple H, Bruce Prichard and the guys will have gone to John and asked him what he wants to do.

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It sure looks like John wants to go out in the time-honored tradition.

He put Brock Lesnar over as a monster (again) at SummerSlam, then Dirty Dominik Mysterio as a master cheat at Survivor Series — and now, I expect, he’ll put over Gunther as “The Ring General” this Saturday.

I’m almost certain that’s going to happen. The only question is if John has asked to be left alone in the ring to say his final goodbyes, to leave his pumps in the middle of the ring, or if the plan is to empty out 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 last Cena opponent spot to LA Knight, who lost the Last Time Is Now Tournament finale to Gunther, would’ve really been interesting to me. The internet wrestling community has “known” that Gunther was going to be John’s final foe for months, so a last-minute swerve would’ve been cool.

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Then again, LA Knight is super popular and the fans are desperate for him to win a big match (more on that later). Rooting for Knight would’ve split the crowd this Saturday, when the evening calls for Cena to have all the support.

My friend — well, my family member, really — Josh Alexander cut a great promo to set up his big match with Swerve Strickland at the second half of AEW Winter’s Coming this Saturday in Cardiff, Wales.

He was out there without Don Callis, a terrible dresser but the best mouthpiece in all of wrestling, and Josh did great.

Josh is one of the very best wrestlers in the world and has been since his record-breaking TNA title run. I’ll keep saying it and I’ll keep taking receipts when folks inevitably text me, “Wow, you were spot-on about Josh.”

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Josh has told this story himself, but he was a fat kid who had no friends, he lived miles and miles away from his school and spent nights and weekends by himself, but discovered TNA wrestling through a magazine his mother bought him.

He starts watching TNA, he loves it. He gets the courage to go to a local wrestling school … and makes a discovery. He takes a back bump. It’s as good as anyone who’s been training for months. He tries more moves, he’s picking them all up fast — real fast.

Wrestling becomes his reason for getting 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 off, and now AEW fans are seeing it too.

Back to LA Knight … to borrow from a popular phrase, his time is now.

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Knight was afforded hints of the superhuman treatment on Monday night. He lost to Logan Paul, but Paul had assistance from Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed and WWE’s mystery masked man. Then backstage he was coming back for more, and it took both Paul and Reed’s best efforts to put him back down.

Paul literally said, “He’s still getting up” to Reed, just loud enough to be caught by the camera.

That tells us exactly what WWE wanted us to think and feel.

Knight’s fans have been miffed for a long time that their “Megastar” hasn’t been given the biggest opportunities, but now I think WWE is deliberately leaning into that feeling. If you are pissed off Knight keeps “eating pinfalls” (I hate that phrase), you are experiencing the storyline as WWE wants you to.

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Something big is coming for Knight.

You know the old saying we either die young or live old enough to become the villain? John Cena, the character and the man playing him, has done the opposite. He’s been around for 26 years and that’s long enough for him to become a universal hero.

Obviously, he was never a real villain (even this year’s heel turn wasn’t enough to make him a villain), but he was the squeaky-clean hero a lot of hardcore fans loved to boo in the early to mid-2000s. Kids loved him, parents loved him, but the hardcore fans still hankering for the Attitude Era — say, 18- to 35-year-old males at the time — really loved booing him.

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For the longest time, there was talk of turning him heel because of those reactions. The way it’s gone down in internet lore is WWE didn’t pull the trigger because John sold so much merch, and it didn’t want to kill the golden goose.

And I’m sure that factored into the decision. But also, WWE did a good job of parsing whether this was just the minority of “too cool for school” types having fun going against the grain or a legit movement where much of the audience was rejecting John.

WWE got it right. It’s not like the ratings and pay-per-view buy rates tanked when Cena was on top.

It’s great to hear Darby Allin is now recovered from the injury he suffered on Nov. 26’s “AEW Collision.” The daredevil was so banged up after his match with Kevin Knight he was kept for observation in the hospital, but according to him, he’s now fine and just waiting for medical clearance.

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As someone who came through the era of “just walk it off and then later let’s get some beers to dull the pain,” I’m always happy to see wrestling take injuries seriously in the modern era.

Wrestlers are tough guys. Even Darby admitted he’s getting saved from himself, meaning he would be wrestling hurt if it were up to him.

Darby’s spot in the Gold 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 loaded 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 Dec. 10, 2022, and has made more than 30 defenses since, including great matches with the likes of Thunder Rosa, Willow Nightingale, Mina Shirakawa and many more.

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Athena is great to work with — she wrestled Gisele Shaw at one of my MLP shows — and so deserves her success. She came through the era where only TNA was treating women’s divisions with full respect, and she fought hard for whatever scraps there were on the indies.

Now she’s thriving and getting to enjoy the product of everything her and a generation of women’s performers put in.

In a day and age of falling role models, where it seems 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 he’s been that for a quarter of a century.

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No drunk-driving arrests, no scandals, not even a hint of anything unbecoming in real life. He broke Hulk Hogan’s old record for most Make-A-Wish visits, and trust me, those are extremely hard emotionally and mentally if you have any kind of heart. And John has a big heart.

And for WWE, he has never walked out on them, never bashed them in interviews or bitched about his spot or someone else’s spot. He even learned Mandarin because he identified that no one else in the company could speak the language, and it need someone who could.

Fans booed him out of the building? He never broke character. Online critics mocked his wrestling skills? He kept working and got better and better.

And he’s crossed over. He’s mainstream. Legit acting skills and roles, big movies, HBO Originals and, at least on my TV, he seems to be doing the voiceover for every third commercial.

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And all the while, he is legitimately someone you feel good about your kids looking up to.

There won’t ever 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 am fluent in maybe none, so I was blown away when Kenny Omega started talking in fluent Japanese.

Kenny came along with Don Callis, Anthem (TNA’s parent company) exec Ed Nordholm and myself when we were meeting New Japan Pro-Wrestling around November 2017. This was just weeks before Don and I were announced as running IMPACT (TNA) Wrestling and we wanted to tell them, “Hey, we want to re-open the partnership between TNA and New Japan.”

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And Kenny starts speaking Japanese not only fluently, but so well he has the New Japan guys roaring with laughter at his jokes. Anyone who speaks multiple languages will tell you humor is really hard to get down.

At one point, Kenny and the Japanese have been howling laughing for three straight minutes, and Don and I are like, “Tell us what’s so funny,” and Kenny goes, “Yeah, it won’t translate that good.”

Around that time, the idea was floated of returning IMPACT Wrestling to the old TNA name. Obviously that eventually happened years later, but it is funny to recall someone suggested “Anthem Wrestling Entertainment.”

Can you even image the fun fans would have had with “AWE?” Thankfully, we stuck with IMPACT and, years later, brought back the TNA initials.

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-standing role with TNA/IMPACT Wrestling, where he served as head of creative. D’Amore is the current owner of leading Canadian promotion Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling.