9 Times WWE Turned Treasure Into TRASH

3. John Cena's Heel Turn

John Cena WWE Raw
WWE

Or should that be "John Cena's Heel Turns", based on how many different ways WWE attempted to frame his big decision in the aftermath of Elimination Chamber 2025?

There had been a feeling right around the Netflix debut of Monday Night Raw in January that the creative boom was about to go off the rails, but Cena's genuinely mind-blowing heel switch after turning heel on Cody Rhodes was a swing so massive that it couldn't really miss.

Until it did, over and over again.

Either in solo missives (to hot but increasingly confused) crowds or in back-and-forths with Cody Rhodes, 'Big Match John' couldn't get a feel for the best version of his villainous self, so just tried on some different ones as if they were themed hat/shirt combos from the merch stand. 

He spoke first of an "abusive relationship" with the audience and his desire to break up with crowds. He tried a bit of meta stuff along the way, noting "I am not a babyface. I am not a heel. I'm a human being". He threatened to "ruin wrestling" and bury it forever by becoming Champion, only to deny being a burial artist the very next week and rebuff such accusations by defiantly stating that  "I don't bury talent, I am talent".

All of this failed to acknowledge why he'd sold his soul to The Rock to facilitate the turn itself (a dropped thread when it became increasingly clear Dwayne Johnson wanted little-to-nothing to do with the whole thing and had no intention of showing up to WrestleMania), and didn't even make use of a proto-turn from the man himself following the Royal Rumble when he defiantly said that; "What is best for business, is that I main event WrestleMania...I am going to the Elimination Chamber to win, and I'm going to main event my final appearance in WrestleMania and win a seventeenth Championship. Because that's what's best for business." 

Anything would have been better or at least more interesting than what actually played out, with the shape-shifting culminating in a literal overnight babyface turn between his SummerSlam main event rematch with Rhodes and the go-home SmackDown that snapped Cena out of his alternate timeline heel adolescence. 

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say. With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.