John Cena has shed new light on the creative thinking behind his shocking heel turn, revealing that one of his primary goals was to make WWE fans actively dislike not only him, but even the matches he was involved in.
The 17-time World Champion's retirement run is one of the focal points of the third season of WWE Unreal, Netflix's behind-the-scenes docuseries exploring WWE's creative process. During the series, Cena explains that after aligning with The Rock at Elimination Chamber in March 2025, his mission to "ruin wrestling" centred on stripping the entertainment value from his performances.
Rather than simply playing a villain, Cena deliberately wanted audiences to leave disappointed.
"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," Cena explained. "To make people like, 'F*** this guy.' It was like, 'That's it? What a sh*tty main event.' Yup, that's what I was going for. Watch the next one."
Cena acknowledged the risks of such an approach, admitting there were concerns it could drive fans away rather than generate traditional heel heat. "Then I was explaining like that was too boring. That was too bad. I think people are going to stop going," Cena recalled. "The perspective was, 'Hey, this isn't heat on you. This is heat on the company.'"
That ultimately prompted WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H to intervene. While he praised Cena's instincts and willingness to experiment, Triple H admitted there came a point where the concept stopped benefiting the overall product.
"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,'" he said. "But there was a certain point in time I was like, 'This ain't working.' You've still got to deliver to these people. Hopefully he'll do it in a manner that they don't like that, but you've got to give them your greatness still."
Cena's heel run saw him defeat Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 to capture a record-breaking 17th world championship before eventually dropping the title back to Rhodes at SummerSlam.
The WWE Hall of Famer has since admitted that the fans themselves ultimately turned him back into a babyface by the end of his farewell tour. However, he has maintained that he has no regrets about fully committing to the experiment, despite the sentiment online being that the whole thing was a failure and a missed opportunity on WWE's part.