Looking back at the events that unfolded, one WWE Hall of Famer stands by an infamous John Cena booking decision.
With a career spanning more than 2 decades, 16 World Championships and countless other accolades, Cena is the most famous wrestler of the 21st century and will be remembered for years to come. However, despite the fact that Cena is pretty much beloved by the fans when he makes his sporadic returns in 2024, it hasn’t always been this way.
At times booked too strongly, a vocal portion of the fans frequently expressed their displeasure at “Super Cena.” In addition to this, a common request was to see Cena turn heel given that he was booked as the ever-conquering babyface for pretty much all of his career. However, despite the cries from fans, Cena remained the same character throughout.
Speaking about Cena on the Something to Wrestle podcast, former Cena rival JBL recalled the insane merchandise numbers Cena did and how keeping him a babyface was the right call in hindsight:
“Those guys that were in that era, they owe Cena a lot, like their cars, their homes, their retirement [laughs] and all kinds of sh*t. Just like we owed Steve [Austin] in the Attitude Era, and all those guys that were on top. Cena sold so much merch.
I was in so many creative meetings, the commentators used to be in the creative meetings on the day of, not the original creative meetings, and I’d see so many guys, you could see a new writer come in who’s very ambitious, it’s not gonna be a few weeks before he pitches the idea of turning Cena heel [laughs], every single one of them would come up with it. Vince [McMahon] was like, ‘No, he sells all our merchandise. What are we gonna do?’ It was the right decision. In hindsight, it was 100% the right decision not to turn Cena heel,”
John Cena Retirement Tour To Begin Soon
On January 6th, Cena will be making his return to the promotion on the debut episode of Raw on Netflix. The appearance will mark the beginning of Cena’s retirement tour that is set to culminate in December 2025. In a recent interview, former John Cena rival Kurt Angle fantasy booked the WWE star’s final match,
In other WWE news, an interesting name will be part of an upcoming Netflix media event.
H/t to Fightful.