John Cena Did Something Unthinkable. Now All Hell Is Breaking Loose. – Slate

There was a disturbance in the force last weekend. I speak not of the destruction of the post–World War II global order, or those tariffs Donald Trump keeps teasing. No, on Saturday night, John Cena—the iconic wrestler and up-and-coming movie star—drastically altered his character. He’s a bad guy now—a despicable heel. To prove it, he beat up the top star on the show and announced himself as the WWE’s preeminent villain. This led to an outcry from the public that echoed around the world.It’s the biggest story in wrestling, and also one of the biggest stories in pop culture right now—one that feels particularly apt at this moment in time, when it seems like all of America is turning heel. But the inner workings of professional wrestling can be opaque to outsiders. You might have some questions. I have too many answers.What happened on Saturday night?Every year, WWE puts on this pay-per-view program called Elimination Chamber, which is typically headlined by a long, multi-man match where the winner gets to challenge the current world champion at WrestleMania in April. (WrestleMania is like the WWE’s Super Bowl. It is, by far, the biggest show on the schedule.) John Cena was booked in the Elimination Chamber, and everyone watching expected him to win. After all, Cena is currently the most iconic performer in American wrestling, and has been appearing in the ring less and less as he pivots to Hollywood. (He’s really good in Blockers. And … less good in Fast & Furious 9.) In fact, this run he’s on is slated to be the prelude to Cena’s retirement from wrestling. Given the stakes, it’d be weird if he wasn’t headlining WrestleMania, right?So yeah, Cena won at Elimination Chamber, and afterwards he and Cody Rhodes—the wrestler holding the belt—came down to the ring to tease the match that’s just been set. Again, this is all typical pro-wrestling pageantry. But what happened next was genuinely unexpected: Cena beat the piss out of Cody. Like, laid him out, kicked him in the nuts, made him bleed, the whole shebang. This was significant, because Cody is, by far, the No. 1 good guy (or in wrestling parlance, the “face”) in WWE. Cena attacking the company’s top protagonist with such brutality was the announcement of something I never thought I’d ever see. For the first time since the early 2000s, John Cena is a bad guy. He turned heel.So what? Doesn’t this happen a lot? I feel like wrestlers turn heel all the time.They do! You’re not wrong. But Cena’s heel turn has some extra gravitas. Essentially, for as long he’s been on WWE TV, Cena has been portrayed as the ultimate All-American Superman. He would wear dog tags to the ring. His slogan was “Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect.” To this day, Cena holds the Guinness World Record for most Make-A-Wishes granted (650, in total). His good-guy persona was so intractable to the WWE brand—and it made them so much money along the way—that the company was institutionally structured around Cena’s white-bread wholesomeness. You know how Amazon is in the midst of rebooting the 007 franchise? Well, imagine if, in the next movie, James Bond is depicted as a sniveling bully. That’s how much of a sea change this is.What was the reaction from wrestling fans?Bedlam. The heel turn was big enough news to make ESPN. There are videos of fully grown men losing their minds at the sight of Cena bloodying Cody. But my favorite artifacts from the plot twist, by far, are the compilation of brokenhearted children, heaving huge sobs, as WWE’s eternal good-guy embraces his dark side. There’s an argument to be made that this is the most mainstream attention that’s been on the wrestling world since 1996, when Hulk Hogan—the goodie two-shoes of a previous generation—turned heel.This is a bad idea then, right? They shouldn’t have made Cena a bad guy?No dude, here’s the thing. Hardcore wrestling fans have been desperate for a Cena heel turn since, at minimum, 2006. Cena is a great wrestler and a great performer, but after years of him serving up the exact same shlock—this anonymous, troops-loving cipher of American exceptionalism—the fans who watch WWE every week were desperate for a shred of nuance, or reinvention, to be injected into the John Cena character. If he was going to be the most important person in the company for two decades, could he at least do something interesting? Now you understand why, for much of his career, Cena’s clean-cut disposition was vociferously booed by some of wrestling’s more cynical fans.And, frankly, from a pure storytelling perspective, this heel turn makes a lot of sense. Cena has accomplished, quite literally, all there is to do in professional wrestling. He’s won the world championship a record 16 times. He’s headlined WrestleMania on five different occasions. He even got engaged in the ring! (Though that didn’t work out in the long term.) Really, the only thing he hasn’t done in the business is a main event heel run—and therefore, a total rebirth of the John Cena persona. Hallelujah.It does seem pretty wild that Cena is willing to do this at the very end of his career. You know, rather than cashing a few checks and going out as a beloved hero.Especially when you consider that John Cena is still very much charting a career in Hollywood! Cena has two movies coming out this year, which he will undoubtedly be promoting while simultaneously portraying the most hated man in WWE. One of those projects is called Matchbox. It’s quite literally based on the Mattel toy car brand of the same name. I love the idea of Cena needing to switch back and forth between his family-friendly red-carpet demeanor and his psychopathic reincarnation between the ropes.Do you think that will matter? Like, are Cena’s movie producers freaking out that he’s made this change?Nah, it should be fine. I mean, last year the Rock was playing a heel in WWE, and he happily opened Moana 2 to the tune of a billion dollars. That said, it is a daring career choice at a moment where Cena has yet to fully meld with the general pop-culture palate. Folks who are getting to know Cena the actor are going to become accustomed to Cena the bloodthirsty dickhead. There’s some dissonance there.Some dissonance, sure, but wrestling is fake. So who cares?Yeah, and it’s actually somehow getting more fake over time. The company’s chief content officer is Paul Levesque, better known by his wrestling moniker Triple H, who replaced the embattled Vince McMahon after a litany of sex-trafficking allegations came to light in 2024. Since Triple H ascended to a head creative role, he has slowly dismantled the fourth wall between reality and the strange parallel dimension wrestling exists inside. For instance, terms like “heel” and “face” were originally born as backstage jargon used by people in the business to designate who would be a good guy and who would be the bad guy when choreographing a match. You’d never hear it on screen, because wrestlers wanted to protect the stagecraft of the business as much as possible.Well, when WWE’s television program Raw debuted on Netflix in January, Triple H unleashed a hilariously overcooked monologue that culminated with him saying: “A great swath of American culture is born of that eternal battle between the face and the heel.” Right on the nose! Nobody is pretending anymore. My point here is that the company is leaning into its own artifice more than ever, and that’s given someone like John Cena more cover than ever to be two people at once.In that sense, maybe there’s never been a more optimal time for John Cena to be a heel.You got that right! He only has to be a bad guy on camera. I’m sure he’ll still be granting plenty of Make-A-Wishes. Forty years ago a guy like Ric Flair needed to be a dick to everyone he came across. The stakes are oddly low for such a seismic shift in the wrestling universe. We all know too much. Modernity poisons everything!And you really think this is the biggest story in pop culture?The Oscars are over. The NFL season has concluded. We’re already halfway through the second season of Severance. I’m telling you, man. You’re about to see a whole lot more of John Cena everywhere, whether you like it or not.Slate is published by The Slate
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Source: https://slate.com/culture/2025/03/john-cena-wwe-heel-turn-movie.html