John Cena turned heel at Elimination Chamber. It was a move that seemed highly unlikely, and one that Vince McMahon was not willing to do.
Triple H, however, approached the situation with a blank slate. He looked at finally turning Cena heel again as a big opportunity. Triple H spoke with Alex McCarthy of Mail Sport at WWE’s European tryouts. The Chief content officer of WWE agreed turning Cena was at the top of his “to-do” list. He said Cena also came in with a great mindset about what they needed to accomplish in his final year. Talks about making him a bad guy started from there.
“[It] would have been very easy – and I’m sure John, at some point, will talk about this – would have been very easy for him to come in here and say, have us roll through all these dates, I’ll do my greatest hits – everyone is going to love it,” Triple H explained. “Or… we can blow people’s minds and go in a different direction and make the whole world go ’wait, what just happened?’”
How did John Cena react to the pitch to turn him heel?
Triple H reiterated that it wasn’t hard to convince Cena to turn heel.
“No,” Triple H said. “It was a conversation – without getting into the details – it was a conversation that when it was brought up, everybody… I think in John’s mind he was like, ‘wow, I didn’t think you were going to say that. I love it.’
“It’s a challenge to him. John’s not a complacent person, right? I think he would have done it and he would have done it happily and he would have done it for fans, but I think there would have been a piece of him that would have been like ‘alright, I’m just going to go through my day here.’”
Triple H believes giving Cena something new flips the creative switch as a performer, noting that the whole company is excited about it.
“This is going to be special because John is lit up about it. We’re lit up about it,” he said. “It’s going to be incredible.”
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