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John Cena embarked on his retirement tour in 2025, and throughout the year, he provided some dream-come-true moments that every fan wanted to see. He won the record breaking 17th World Championship at WrestleMania 41, which is more than anyone in WWE. He also became a WWE Grand Slam Champion.
However, that is not all; one of the most exciting things he did in 2025, during his retirement tour, was turning heel. It was his first heel turn in over 21 years. The fans had been desperately waiting to see him turn heel for a long time. A large number of old school WWE fans wanted to see him turn heel ever since he became the face of WWE.
John Cena talked about turning heel in early 2025
But Vince McMahon was never a fan of turning him heel, as he always wanted to put him over as a lovable babyface. The dream of seeing an evil John Cena came true at the dying moments of his professional wrestling career. Cena recently talked about the impact of his heel turn while speaking with Cody Rhodes on his “What Do You Wanna’ Talk About?” podcast. He said;
John Cena turned heel for the first time in over 21 years at the Elimination Chamber event
“Again, I rarely walk down hypotheticals. Let’s walk down hypothetical street for a second. Walk it down. Let’s say everyone that showed up at the chamber is active until August. That robs us of John Cena/Randy Orton. That robs us of John Cena/CM Punk, John Cena/Ron Cena, John Cena/AJ Styles, John Cena/Logan Paul. Me and you for the last one. Mano a mano. So yes, the story that might’ve been might’ve had star power and gravity and who knows what, but what we got by just being like, these are the pieces left.
He turned babyface again in August
"What can we build? What we got from me personally was beautiful. Was beautiful. And I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind again. I’ve released art into the world, and they can think how they want about it. I’m just also saying that like, is it a wise investment in time? And what I’ve learned about like credible wrestling critiques, it’s of course it’s, ’cause you want chatter and you want clickbait, but not like, let’s analyze what happened.”
It might have been a dream-come-true moment for the fans, but this heel run went on to be a disaster. The fans have already started to consider it the worst storyline of 2025. It was quite clear that Triple H wanted to provide the dream come true moment, but he had no plans for what to do after John Cena finally turned heel. He turned baby face again just before Summerslam, and he ended his career as a babyface.
