AJ Styles and John Cena really embraced the nostalgia of their final showdown in Perth from entrance to the final bell, starting with Styles’ return to the iconic trunks of his TNA days, and then a special introduction for him mentioning his legacy with TNA and as the leader of Bullet Club. And while one might have expected them to run the greatest hits of their own catalog, they took it a step further over the course of 27 minutes to collect a smorgasbord of finishers from their rivals of yore. 

Cena, of course, hit the Attitude Adjustment, and then another, and then another, as well as the STF, the Five-Knuckle Shuffle and the other “Five Moves of Doom.” Styles, of course, hit the Styles Clash, a whole bunch of forearms, a 450 splash, and his Calf Crusher submission. But when their best wasn’t enough to end the match, they started to dip into a whole new kind of trip down memory lane. Cena delivered the Skull Crushing Finale, an ode to The Miz, and at the time surprising the audience with the move out of nowhere. 

But that in itself spurred an exchange of each man’s rivals over the years’ finishers, with Styles using Sting’s Scorpion Death Drop, Samoa Joe’s Coquina Clutch, Christopher Daniels’ Angels’ Wings, countering a Pedigree into Frankie Kazarian’s Fade to Black, and lastly tuning up to deliver Shawn Michaels’ Sweet Chin Music. On the other hand, Cena delivered the aforementioned SCF, locked in Rusev’s Accolade, Chris Jericho’s Walls of Jericho, paid heartwarming tribute to Bray Wyatt with Sister Abigail’s Kiss, taking a moment after the consequent near-fall for the crowd to shine their ‘Fireflies,’ went for the aforementioned Pedigree before succeeding with a draping DDT followed by RKO in homage to Randy Orton. When that failed, he sought for Orton’s punt kick, missing and getting slammed for Styles to go for Five-Knuckle Shuffle, only to then be interrupted a la Kane or Undertaker with a sit-up chokeslam. 

Cena sought to deliver the 619, only for Styles to escape the move, but would eventually finish things with the Tombstone Piledriver setting up the last Attitude Adjustment. It was a match that embraced what it was, a nostalgia trip that dared not to hold a candle to their work when they were younger, and reliably substituted that with beats from their respectively lengthy careers. It was something only they could do, to circumvent what they can do no longer, combining a love letter to their careers, a ballad of professional wrestling’s main event picture over the past couple of decades, and an epic in testament to that between the bells. As a result, by far the best match of the soon-to-conclude Cena retirement tour, and a very good reminder of who Styles can be when given the time to do so. 

Written by Max Everett