John Cena has explained his concept for his 2025 heel turn and why he had to change direction.
During his farewell tour, John Cena made the shock decision to turn heel for the first time in two decades. After turning on Cody Rhodes at Elimination Chamber, Cena told fans on Raw that he wanted to “ruin wrestling,” and now he has opened up on what he meant by that.
On the first episode of WWE Unreal Season 3, Cena said he planned to “take the fun away from fans” and deliberately wrestle boring matches that would anger the audience.
“What does that mean, to ruin wrestling? That means to take the fun away from the fans. That means to win that championship with methodical, catastrophically boring work. To make people like, ‘f**k this guy.’ Everybody’s like, ‘that’s it? What a s**tty main event.’ Yup, that’s what I was going for. Watch the next one.’
Unfortunately, the concept turned out to be too effective, and the 17-time World Champion was told he was no longer getting heat on himself, but on the whole company.
“Then I was explaining like, ‘That was too boring, ‘like, ‘That was too bad, I think people are gonna stop coming.’ The perspective was, ‘Hey, this isn’t heat on you, this is heat on the company.’”
Triple H also addressed the heel turn, saying that Cena had good instincts, but they reached a point where it was clear the storyline wasn’t working.
“To some degree, John’s instinct was spot on. John earned the spot to be like, ‘okay, well let’s take a shot at it.’
“But there was a certain point in time where I was like, ‘alright, this ain’t working.’ You still got to deliver to these people. Hopefully you’ll do it in a manner in which they don’t like that. But you gotta give them your greatness still.”
John Cena returned to being a fan favourite at SummerSlam 2025, but despite the backlash of his heel run, the star has since said he had no regrets about trying it.
John Cena Names Toughest Match Of His Career
In another interview, John Cena named the toughest match of his career, saying it was his last bout against Brock Lesnar during his farewell tour. Cena explained that it wasn’t just the physicality of the match, but the mental toll it took on him that made it so difficult.
