John Cena Reveals New Details About His Scrapped Heel Turn Against The Rock

John Cena has been a bonafide good guy for two decades. After shedding his Doctor of Thuganomics persona, Cena embraced his role as the face that runs the place, becoming WWE’s go-to fan-favorite throughout the late 2000s and 2010s. While this made him wildly popular with WWE’s target demographic, Cena was far from welcomed by WWE’s older crowd. “Cena sucks!” chants regularly drowned out the “let’s go Cena!” cries, as a large portion of WWE’s fanbase had grown tired of Cena’s babyface schtick and longed for him to turn to the dark side. As legend has it, WWE once put those plans in place.

John Cena Details Cancelled Heel Turn

In an alternate timeline, Big Match John embraced the hate.

Speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight, John Cena detailed the scrapped plans for his heel turn.

“It was Cena Rock 1. I got word that they were going to do it. I went out and recorded a new song. I went out and got all new gear,” Cena said. “In 48 hours, I had a new track, a new studio mix theme song, and a final mix. I had seven new singlets, low-cut singlets with boxing-type robes. I already had the boots in storage, so I dusted them off. I was ready to go and already thinking about what I could do with the story.”

Once he had the theme music and fresh gear in place, Cena got to brainstorming about what his new persona would be.

“A heel is not just new gear. The message behind the singlet and the boxing robes and the boots is the exact opposite of what you saw with the street gear, the jeans shorts, the t-shirt, the ball cap, the sneakers,” Cena continued. “Go the opposite route and now lean into the opposite of everything you stand for.

“I would begin to not work as hard. I would show up less. I would be untrustworthy and unloyal. I would lack respect in what I did. I would give up a lot. All those things you can take and make interesting stories and this is the stuff that’s running through my head, not what moves can I do. How can I take the intellectual property that people are familiar with and twist it so it’s like, ‘This guy’s f–king insane.’”

Cena was all in on this character shift, willing to essentially go method in order to get booed. This included taking a page out of Chris Jericho’s playbook, as Cena wanted to not have any merchandise available. It was then that WWE pulled the plug, realizing how much money it would lose by turning Cena.

“I think that was the conversation that was eventually had where it’s like, okay, it’s a bad idea,” Cena added. “‘I know this is going to sting, but I’m not going to sell another T-shirt. I’m going to take all merchandise off the market. I’m not going to put out anything new. I’m not going to do any more appearances. I’m not going to do any Make-A-Wish. I’m not going to do anything like that. I’m going to be a bad guy to make your good guy so your good guy does all that. That’s when I was like, we’re kind of in too deep. So it worked out the way it worked out, but bro, I was ready.”