5 Ups & 8 Downs From John Cena's WWE Retirement Tour

7. R-Truth Shenanigans

Much like many items on this list, there was a treasure trove of potential great ideas to explore with John Cena’s heel turn, and WWE managed to utterly botch nearly every one of them.

R-Truth has played the village idiot for well over a decade, with one of his gimmicks being that he refers to Cena as his “childhood hero”… despite being five years older than Cena. There was serious potential here to have Truth unwittingly help Cena by having the newly minted heel fill his head with delusions. This could have been spread out over a couple months until Truth smartened up and stood up for himself, making for an actually compelling match between the two.

Instead, Truth stupidly helped Cena retain his title against Randy Orton at Backlash, and Cena promptly put Truth through a table with an Attitude Adjustment at the post-show press conference (remember those?). This set up a short match at Saturday Night’s Main Event, which Cena won.

WWE then inexplicably released – and then rehired – Truth, who interfered at Money in the Bank to help Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso defeat Cena and Logan Paul. A serious character shift didn’t change anything, and Truth was back in the undercard goofing it up.

What could have been an intriguing story of manipulation was cast aside in favor of WWE speed-running a lame, forgettable angle. In fact, the entire escapade is known for Truth being fired and brought back. That’s not a ringing endorsement.