John Cena’s heel turn barely scratched the surface of what he had planned. WWE viewers saw him turn against the crowd, but they never got the new gear, entrance music, movement or obnoxious wrestling style he created for the character.
Cena broke down the scrapped plans during his Fan Expo Canada Q&A. He said turning heel during his retirement tour was difficult because people had waited years to see it, but everyone knew he only had seven months left. That gave him enough time to turn bad—but not enough time to complete the story and become a hero again.
“It was difficult on many levels. One, because I think it’s a moment people wanted to see, especially now that I can reflect on it. But they also knew that I had a very limited amount of time left. I think you guys have come to know me after 23 years. Some people I met today were like, ‘Man, I saw your first match and your last.’ You all knew I only had, like, seven months left. So, to turn bad knowing that I don’t have enough time to turn good—you guys are the litmus test. When something doesn’t work, you guys let us know loud and clear.”
Cena tried to make the turn personal by blaming the same audience that spent years chanting “Cena sucks.” The logic was simple: the people rejected him for years, so he finally rejected them. Cena believes it could have worked if he had years to commit to the character, but the retirement clock killed that possibility.
“For a few shows, you kind of played along, and I tried to craft a narrative in my head that made sense: ‘I’m sick of you guys saying Cena sucks. You guys have never done anything for me in my life. My time is now.’ It makes sense because y’all said it. But as genuine as it was and the roots that it had, I didn’t have enough time left. I think if I had three years to be a bad guy, you wouldn’t be wearing that shirt. You’d be throwing two fingers up, and they’d be in between these two.”
What aired on WWE television was only a small piece of the character. Cena had a much nastier idea in mind: He wanted to “ruin wrestling” by deliberately draining the fun from his matches and using moves designed to piss people off.
“I had this crazy idea to ruin wrestling. By ruining wrestling, I was taking the fun out of it. I was going to do moves that were going to make y’all upset. I mean, you thought the Five Moves of Doom sucked? I had a bag of turds just waiting for y’all. I never got to let it out of the bag, which is okay.”
Cena didn’t stop with a few bad-guy promos. He built the entire persona behind the scenes, complete with new singlets, robes, entrance music, mannerisms and a different in-ring style. WWE even filed a trademark connected to the idea, but most of the work never made it in front of the audience.
“In the creative process, we come up with a ton of stuff. It’s well known that I got singlets made and robes made. WWE filed for the trademark. I made the song. Basically, I was prepared. I only did all that stuff because it could possibly happen. I went out and redid all my gear. I did new entrance music. I crafted a new persona. I imagined how I would walk, how I would move through space and the moves that I would do, only because I heard that this might happen.”
The character fell apart once Cena started delivering matches that pulled people back to his side. Instead of hating him, the audience saw the longtime hero underneath the act and refused to let him remain a villain.
“I started facing opponents who brought the best out of me, and you guys started getting into the matches more. You kind of turned it around for me. So, it was difficult because, essentially, it didn’t work. You guys saw the good in me, and you wouldn’t let me be bad for too long. We all had our fun. We had a moment, but then very quickly we righted the ship. I’m grateful for having tried it.”
Cena also has no plans to release “Fear My Name,” the entrance song created for the character. He wants the unused material to remain private because he knows people would build an imaginary version of the heel run that never happened.
“The reason I don’t want it to get released is because y’all will spin a narrative in your head of what could have been. It wasn’t. What we had was what we had. Some things and some ideas can stay mine, and that’s okay.”
WWE viewers got Cena’s heel turn, but they never got the complete heel Cena. The version sitting behind the curtain had its own look, sound, movement and match style—and Cena appears determined to keep most of it buried.
Would Cena’s complete heel persona have worked if WWE had given him several years to unleash it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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