10 Times WWE Mocked What We Really Wanted
5. The John Cena Heel Turn
The core issue behind the John Cena character is that two audiences watched him perform.
One was louder, the other was more lucrative.
The more vocal fans (your writer included) failed to grasp the shift in the business landscape. That's not to excuse Cena's rotten inability to elevate or not outright bury the vast majority of his opponents, pre-2015, but the anti-Cena hardcores projected an old metric to justify their demand for a heel turn. The idea was to give them what they wanted, cast Cena as the primary antagonist, and allow them to cheer the more cult fashionable workers. It was a well-reasoned, have cake, eat cake pitch that overlooked the indirect value Cena brought to WWE. His gurning, kid-friendly persona fronted WWE as it morphed in standing to the TV industry as something worthy of sponsors.
Vince McMahon making even more vast sums of money was rather easy to ignore when Cena made an STF look more inscrutable than an NFT.
Cena teased the turn the night after WrestleMania 29, which was especially galling. It followed a foregone conclusion to an underwhelming lie of a feud.
It never happened. It was just Cena having fun with the audience.
Instead of sucking up, he could have just sold a bit better, but never mind.