When John Cena announced in July 2024 that 2025 would mark his final year as a professional wrestler, few could have envisioned that his final-ever WrestleMania match would look like this. Although the 16-time WWE world champion is numerous things to many people – a role model, a hero, a patriot, a legend – few would ever describe him as a villain.
By some cruel twist of fate or possibly haphazard planning, Cena will not be cheered on Sunday, as he enters Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium to face Cody Rhodes for the WWE championship in his 17th and final WrestleMania match. He’ll be mercilessly booed.
Barring a brief, early ‘heel’ run in his career, where he was positioned as an arrogant white rapper, Cena has always been portrayed as WWE’s biggest hero. An individual whom all children could look up to and someone only cynics would rally against.
For a long long time, this route proved to be very marketable and financially successful for WWE. Cena’s endless parade of colourful T-shirts, baseball caps and wristbands bearing his “You can’t see me” catchphrase are among the company’s best-selling merchandise for years. Outside of the ring, Cena couldn’t have been more of an inspiration if he tried. He still holds the record for the most wishes fulfilled for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a charity that works with the families of seriously ill children. His “Herculean” record of 650 meet-and-greets and counting is an achievement that is unlikely to be beaten.
All that being said, Cena – to ardent wrestling fans – is a divisive figure. Although he is a 16-time champion, almost none of his victories have been greeted with the jubilation that Cody Rhodes received when he finally “finished the story” at WrestleMania 40, for instance.
Cena won his first world title in 2005, fewer than four years after his debut. Although he would dominate WWE’s main event scene for the next decade, there was always a sense that others were more deserving. Chants of “You can’t wrestle” and “Same old s***” would soundtrack his matches when facing cult favourites, most notably against Rob Van Dam in 2006 and CM Punk in 2011. Perhaps it was a lack of creativity or risk-taking on WWE’s behalf for these volatile reactions – he would have ironically been cheered if he had turned heel a lot sooner – but it took a long time for Cena to actually be acknowledged for his in-ring talents, thanks mostly to critically lauded matches with younger stars like Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens and Cesaro, and veteran AJ Styles.
Interestingly, Cena’s relationship with WrestleMania has been as complicated as his relationship with the fans.
Barring his two headline matches against The Rock in 2012 and 2013 (sold mostly on the premise that these were “once in a lifetime” matches, despite happening twice), Cena has never felt like the biggest attraction at WWE’s largest show of the year – even when he proposed to fellow wrestler and then-real-life girlfriend Nikki Bella in 2017 (they later split).
Whether it was major celebrities like Floyd Mayweather or Donald Trump taking the spotlight on the night or certain wrestlers just being more popular at that time of year – Daniel Bryan, Batista, Rey Mysterio, Shawn Michaels – Cena’s efforts at WrestleMania have always been overshadowed by something more significant.
There’s also a feeling that Cena often didn’t deserve to win many of his matches, a frequent argument that can be made against his entire career, but especially at WrestleMania. His victories over Bray Wyatt and Rusev in 2014 and 2015 were more harmful to those men’s careers than beneficial to Cena’s.
Another note of interest: of Cena’s 17 WrestleMania matches, only five have ever main-evented the show. Many of his bouts were bumped further down the card as fans gravitated to better-developed and more intense feuds that were prevalent at that time.
Compare this to Roman Reigns, who at the age of 39 has already competed in nine WrestleMania main events, then you start to see a pattern emerge with Cena’s relationship to the event. Although he is undoubtedly one of WWE’s biggest-ever stars, when it comes to the so-called “Showcase of the Immortals”, Cena is rarely seen as the most important person on the day.
This brings us to the present, and it has taken the one thing many fans have clamoured for, for years, to finally make him WrestleMania’s star attraction: a heel turn.
Don’t get me wrong, Cena vying for a record-breaking 17th championship against Cody Rhodes in the main event would have been a big deal regardless of where he stood on the good-and-evil spectrum. But the fact he’s in that latter camp gives the match an extra layer of intrigue, especially for the fans who viciously booed him all those years ago.
“I feel like it’s still [chants of], ‘Let’s go, Cena,’ ‘Cena sucks,’ but it’s the opposite way around,” WWE superstar The Miz, who main-evented against Cena in 2011, told The Independent. “Now the people that were saying ‘you suck’ are saying ‘you’re awesome’ because they wanted him as a bad guy, a heel. The people that were saying ‘you’re awesome’ are saying ‘you suck’. It’s kinda nice to let go of Super Cena, to let go of Captain America. Before, it was just [cartoonish impression ensues]: ‘Hello, everyone, I’m John Cena! How’s everyone doing? I’m here to smile!’”
As always with Cena, there’s a sense that things could have been handled just a bit better, that something is missing. Although his initial turn at Elimination Chamber in March was very positively received due to its utterly shocking manner (the entire segment has been viewed more than 8 million times on YouTube), the weeks following haven’t quite matched those heights.
Although Cena’s delivery on the microphone, using those years of animosity as justification for his turn, and verbal exchanges with Rhodes have been enjoyable, there is a feeling that this chapter of his career was not something he or WWE planned for when he announced his retirement tour.
For many fans, this is likely the last time they’ll ever see Cena in a WWE setting. They naturally want to cheer him because – despite some inclinations to jeer him in the past – they know they’ll miss him when he’s gone. But the new presentation is telling them that they should boo him.
In a strange bit of planning, the promo where Cena tried to explain his heel turn took place in Belgium, a country WWE has never broadcast a live show from before. Those fans, in awe of the icon, naturally wanted to cheer him, leading to a now infamous moment with a young Cena supporter who looked to be on the verge of tears, after Cena said the child and the rest of the fans had been in a “toxic, dysfunctional relationship” with him.
The absence of The Rock and megastar rapper Travis Scott, who aided Cena during his heel turn at Elimination Chamber, hasn’t helped matters either, causing Cena and Rhodes to awkwardly skirt around two large elephants in the room.
Wrestling fans, perhaps more than in any form of entertainment, will critique even the most miniscule details, especially when things don’t live up to expectations. Yet any problems fans have had with the build to Cena’s final WrestleMania match will evaporate when the bell rings in the main event on 20th April.
The road to get here has not been perfect, one of many ups and downs for both Cena and fans alike. Whether he actually wins a 17th world title will be beside the point – although it would be the cherry on the cake of his illustrious career. WWE fans will finally be able to “see” Cena in a role he has rarely performed: as WrestleMania’s biggest star.
WWE is available to watch on Netflix in the UK & Ireland, including Raw, Smackdown, NXT, all Premium Live Events, and the WWE archive. WrestleMania 41 is the next Premium Live Event you can watch live on Netflix, on 19 and 20 April.
