John Cena Compares His 12-Year-Old ‘Almost’ Heel-Turn Against Dwayne Johnson With Iconic Star Wars Character

Wrestling icon John Cena recently appeared on the popular podcast “Insight with Chris Van Vliet,” where he reminisced about his past title reigns, including the tantalizing possibility of chasing a record-breaking 17th championship. He also delved into other topics like his encounter with MJF, the memorable match against Bray Wyatt, and a potentially scrapped heel turn in 2012. While explaining the phase, he also provided a philosophical rationale for the same.

John Cena shares his philosophy about his rumoured 2012 heel turn

John Cena engaged in a feud against The Rock at WrestleMania 28 when the event took place in Miami. The match was built as a Once-in-a-lifetime match between the two iconic once-in-a-generation superstars. Interestingly WWE billed both as faces for their match.

Recalling the phrase, Cena informed that he was about to turn heel for the match but gave a philosophical rationale behind the same. He said, “We all turn heel at one point, it’s just a matter of if you see the light and I think that’s what makes a lot of the characters redeemable, is if you take a really good guy and then have them lose their way. It’s Darth Vader in Star Wars but you want to root for him because you know you don’t give up on that guy.”

John Cena was referring to the storylines related to characters turning heel over a period of time and considered this as a natural progress. It keeps an option for the characters to redeem themselves after going down a different trajectory. Cena cited the example of popular Star War character, Darth Vader, who turned villain after losing his way. It’s a plot often used by WWE in their storylines. Among the current superstars, Drew McIntyre is going through the same.

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Cena further explained, “So, the weird thing is, that’s supposed to happen. Like if you think of the course of human life, no one is perfect, and it’s very tough each day to wake up and live a good life. It’s tough to be mistake-free. So, that’s like human trajectory. We all go through patches where we, you know, we make decisions against our value system.” Cena closed the segment by calling the trajectory as beautiful. However, fans never got to see the same for Cena as Vince McMahon never allowed him to turn heel. 

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