WWE boss pulls back curtain on John Cena heel turn ahead of WrestleMania 41

WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque pulled back the curtain on the idea that John Cena would become the bad guy for at least the beginning of his farewell tour from the company.

Cena sided with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at Elimination Chamber and participated in a beatdown of Cody Rhodes after winning his match to punch his ticket to WrestleMania 41. It was a shocking moment that left pro wrestling fans, and sports fans in general, stunned.

Levesque, who was better known as Triple H during his in-ring career at WWE, appeared on “High Performance” and talked about the decision to turn Cena heel. Levesque recalled wrestling Cena in the late 2000s and the fans growing bored with his “hustle, loyalty, respect” good-guy gimmick.

As Cena announced his final run, Levesque noted that he could have done the easy thing but decided to toy with the idea of fully turning Cena’s character.

“In my mind … the safe thing to do is a yearlong tour where you goes town to town, and he does his greatest hits, and it’s safe, and it’s easy, and it’s fun. But, as a performer, you’re sort of going through the motions,” he said. “You’re playing the same concert you’ve played a million times. People love it, but I’ve seen it. It’s nice, it’s all those things, safe, easy, fun all that stuff.

“But I went to John and said what if, what if we pulled the lever that no one ever wanted to pull and what if we turn you heel because to me it sort of felt like, if you never do it, boy, you just kinda let that dangling there. … Then, to me, we get to write for this guy that’s been the ultimate good guy for 20-plus years. We get to turn him bad and how does that look?”

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Levesque said he went over what exactly happened at Elimination Chamber, which took place in March. Rhodes is asked to sell his soul to The Rock, sides with the fans, gets seemingly congratulated by Cena, and then, Cena kicks him in the groin.

“Bad guys have to be justified in the ‘why.’ It has to make sense and it can be skewed to like, ‘Well that makes sense. I don’t agree with that. I think he’s wrong. I don’t agree with it. But I see how he could think that.,’” Levesque said.

“So, in John’s mind, for 20-plus years, ‘I’ve done everything the right way, yet you’ve told me I suck, you’ve booed me and you’ve said I’m Super Cena, I can’t wrestle, I only have five moves, I this, I that,’ like all the things he’s overcome for 25 years, you can now flip that on them and be bitter. In your last run, in your desire to have one last big, successful run, ‘I know my time is running out and if I’m going to do this, I might not be as good as I used to be. I might not be as fast, I might not be as strong, I might not be as good of a performer, so I have to sell myself out. I have to cheat. I have to do things that I wouldn’t have done the rest of my career because of hustle, loyalty respect, I wouldn’t have done those things but now I will be because I’m desperate in my last hours.’ It makes sense for the character.

Levesque said Cena told him he did not think that was where he would have gone for the last hurrah, but he said, “I f—ing love it.”

He added that Cena was up for the challenge of making the crowd hate him.

Cena received a tremendous amount of boos as he appeared on “Monday Night Raw” a few times while the company was in Europe. He blamed the fans for creating the person who he is now, vowed to “ruin wrestling” and win his record-breaking 17th championship.