How would you have booked Cena's heel run then?
not involve the rock in any way (triple h booked him knowing he was going to be unavailable after EC and also the reason given in kayfabe for him selling his soul doesn't even make sense. why would cena need to sell his soul for hollywood when he's already in hollywood and is retiring for hollywood) and sure as hell not travis scott lol
make him equal to - if not worse in monstrosity than - 2009 randy, including leveraging that monstrosity towards randy himself when they fought. literally beat and torture the living fuck out of him just like he did to cody at EC, to emphasize how much of a menacing and uncaring and monstrous heel he is. frame it as pent-up rage for 15+ years of disrespect by everybody (and pent-up rage towards randy specifically for all the torment randy inflicted on him back in the day) and 15+ years of playing the same stupid one-note character. him turning on r-truth was the only thing they got right, and even then it fully wasn't as it was for the wrong reason (cena "cared" about randy and didn't need ron's help). fuck the whole "i'm giving you nothing because you deserve nothing," it should've been about cena displaying the evil he's capable of being which ironically is not what the little kids who worship him want or deserve. like imagine a cena torturing & actually trying to KILL his opponents, he'd genuinely commit literal murder before allowing anyone to take the title off of him
have the ENTIRE fucking roster want to take a fucking shot at him for various reasons. babyfaces AND heels. be it to take the championship from him, to humble him, to get him back to the 'good' john cena, to simply inflict pain on him because they hate him regardless of whether he's a heel or face. not just randy & cody & punk & AJ and all of his other iconic rivals. i still think a feud between drew and cena because drew hates cena for representing 'corporatism' and being a 15-year-long annoying imbecile or whatever, would've been fucking great. along with a feud between seth + the vision and cena that spawned because seth tried to cash in on him.
have him team up with female heels (becky, naomi, charlotte, liv (especially since she's a huge cena stan), MAYBE jade after she turned heel, lash legend, etc.) against cody or another male babyface opponent, and a female babyface (rhea, iyo, stephanie vaquer, bayley, lyra, etc.) hell, cena & becky instead of seth & becky had seth gotten injured earlier against punk and aj would've been FUNTASTIC and i'm not just saying that because i ship all 3 of them with him lol. or cena & becky versus cody & bayley/lyra. or cena & liv versus cody & nikki pre-nikki's heel turn, regardless of his and nikki's bad blood.
have him target and mock other heels - and if they're champions, try and take their belts because they're not on his level. him taking the world heavyweight championship from punk/seth/gunther/jey and the intercontinental championship from dom in addition to having the undisputed championship because he's john goddamned cena and he can have 3 belts if he wants to (and he'd also literally nab an 18th championship ("never-seen seventeen" ➡️ "Ain't Seen Eighteen") so this would stroke his ego and cause him to be a menace to society even MORE).
have him antagonize the NXT/TNA talent so they'd get a shot at whooping his ass too. joe hendry v. cena, oba femi v. cena (honestly? this should've been his retirement match), and trick williams v. cena would've all been goddamned spectacular.
he antagonizes pearce, aldis (lmao throwback to that one smackdown when he got in his face and turned his cap backwards vbfdnbhdfjs), the commentators AND triple h. he's such a menace even the fucking suits want smoke with his ass 😭😭😭😭
idc if he dresses the same because it's what he personally wants (again, it's about him, not about what the fans want) but i would personally make his song 'bad, bad man' his heel entrance music
he turns back face AFTER he's been defeated at summerslam (or wrestlepalooza or maybe even wargames) and has to concede with his defeat - not before. and he gives a speech to the fans and the other talent and even the staff apologizing for everything he's done to them this whole year and thanking everyone for everything once the match is over. also it's not fucking brick loser who's the guy that drives it home that cena's now a babyface - that's hogan paul or drew mcintyre or something.
maybe one might disagree with a few of these but i feel like this would ensure EVERYONE got to have fun equally during his retirement tour/heel run all the while still making it about cena and bringing out the best in his character (as well as his acting range; he's definitely capable of playing a truly terrifying and villainous character if they'd let him), as well as enabling him to put so many people over as he had for decades, with the added effect of doing so on his way out and leaving behind an iconic run in the process.
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