The Never Seen 17 is out here trying to promote his Clash of Clans tie-in, and his excellent turn
as a villain in Acme vs. Coyote, and he keeps getting asked about the end of his in-ring WWE career.Earlier this week John Cena revealed that he thought WrestleMania 36’s Firefly Fun House match would be his last, and now he’s talking about the lead up to what he vows was the only final match he’ll ever have.
Graham “GSM” Matthews brought it up after he and Cena talked a bunch about Clash of Clan’s “Search
for Cena”. In an interview for WrestleRant, Matthews specifically asked about Cena’s long-awaited heel turn. He wanted to know if Cena would have regretted not turning heel during his career, or if he thinks he’d be looking back and asking, “what if?”
Cena offered a lengthy answer. It starts with a pretty undeniable point in favor of Cena’s heel turn, his final match, and everything that occurred during his last year before retiring from “falling down”, as he sometime calls it.
“Well, that’s a great question, a hypothetical one, but — I’ll walk down hypothetical lane. Let’s say we never do it. I think that would give you as a writer a great canon for articles to write on like, ‘Man, what would it have been like?’
“But now we have what really happened. We got a heel version of me, and we we did the best we could with the time we had. As far as like did it work or not. Okay, there’s a lot of aspects to that.
“From a business side, we didn’t have a seat left, and you know people watched in numbers. So I don’t know if it didn’t work from a business standpoint.
All the numbers aren’t at my fingertips, but John Pollock at Post helpfully reminds us that Cena’s last match at Washington, D.C.‘s Capital One Center not only sold out, it set WWE’s all-time arena gate record. He knows that’s not the only piece, however.
In addresses the creative shortcomings of his retirement run, Cena circles back around to what was successful, like the initial turn itself at March 1, 2025’s Elimination Chamber. With The Rock and Travis Scott by his side that was, forgive me, an electrifying moment. But it fizzled out, in part because neither of Cena’s villainous allies have been seen since. That’s one thing he brings up as, not an excuse, but a bit of an explanation [emphasis mine]:
“But then, there’s the creative standpoint. Sometimes blockbuster movies are poorly reviewed by critics. So I understand where critically people are like, ‘Man, that’s just not what I wanted to see.’”
“Intrinsically, I would have loved to have a chance to literally ruin wrestling, to wrestle so poorly that people just wanted to see me go, and then wanted to see a hero thwart me. We didn’t have that kind of time, and that would not have been good for business. That would have made people stop coming to the shows, and that would have made the numbers go down.
“So, I’m grateful that I had good guidance around me, and good mentors. And I’m also accountable for critique. I was just in Toronto for Dream Con, a convention there, and gosh, so many people were like, ’”Yo, I was there for [Cena’s heel turn at last year’s Elimination] Chamber and it was crazy.” So, I know that the moment was crazy, and then … if you’ve seen [Netflix’s] Unreal, like stuff changes in the WWE all the time. Well, a bunch of stuff changed for us. So, with high level plans like that where, you know, you think you got eight chess pieces and and find out you got one or two — you got to make do with what you got. And that’s also okay.
He’s less coy when reminding us that he doesn’t “call the plays”, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque does. Before definitively states he wouldn’t change anything about last year, he drops that several of the things online fans complained about the most weren’t his ideas:
“I guess long and short — I’m glad to have done it. I never asked for it, so it wasn’t my idea. It was Paul’s idea. And he even says himself, he asked me, and in two seconds it was a ‘yes’. Just like facing Brock or tapping out to Gunther. Yes. That’s how I do business. ‘Yes’. Just let me tell the story my way, you know. So … if we never did it, I would have been fine.
“It would have been nice for you guys to write about like, ‘Oh man, he never did it.’ In reflecting, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m glad we got to do it, because it helps me now when I speak to younger talent and say like, ‘Yo, be bold, take chances, don’t worry about failing — or you gotta fail. I come from a place of activity, not a place of privilege where I’m in some sort of protected bubble.”
Whoever deserves whatever percentage of the blame, Cena will accept the heel turn as a failure because failures are always useful:
“A lot of folks will say the heel turn failed. Okay, I accept that as a failure, but I swung boldly. A lot of folks were upset with the finish of the last match. Goodness, I accept that critique — and I feel great that I swung boldly in my final moments. So, it helps me as as now a conduit to talk to people who might not be able to understand my journey and be like, “Yo, man, I’m swinging.”
Does any of that change your take on John Cena’s heel turn, or final year as a member of the WWE’s active roster?
