What's the End Game for John Cena's Farewell Tour?

Just over 70 days ago, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, wrestling fans finally got the opportunity to see one of the more shocking moments in the art form: John Cena turning heel for the first time since becoming "the guy" for WWE in 2005. It was a moment that was instantaneously put on par with Hulk Hogan's turn at Bash at the Beach in 1996, and greater than some classics like Andre aligning with Bobby Heenan, and the breakup of the Rockers. Unfortunately, with an early enough sample size as we hit the midway point of May, we are on track to where the heel turn itself is the peak of this entire angle.

It's become abundantly clear from the fallout of WrestleMania with the rumored creative strife with Paul "Triple H" Levesque and the Rock that this Cena heel turn was a relatively last-minute decision, and what Cena has been given for what should be the biggest angle of his career right at the buzzer, feels like a pretty good indicator of that. Hell, why else would the biggest heel in a company be wearing babyface merchandise in its purest form (Spoiler: it's because they had those shirts and hats ready to go for a while, and WWE, of all companies, wasn't about to pass up free money).

Now, seeing that Cena's next short-term angle will be with R-Truth in a matter of weeks, what is the endgame here exactly? The Rock left them high and dry, so he's a non-factor, and the early theme here is nostalgia, with a CM Punk feud almost certainly on the horizon, but is that seriously all this run will be? My hope is not, but here's what the Federation has gotten right with the heel turn (very little), gotten wrong with this heel turn (a lot), and what the end goal could, or even should, ultimately be.

What's Gone Right

Let's get the good out of the way since, unfortunately, there hasn't been much. The biggest thing this Cena run has going for it is that WWE's core audience is clearly engaged with what's happening. That doesn't mean that'll be the case the entire way through, but Cena has had audiences in the palm of his hands for the past few months, even getting Las Vegas to turn on Cody Rhodes twice during 'Mania weekend. Additionally, even if last weekend's bout with Randy Orton (a good, not great affair in my estimation) wasn't in the latter's backyard of St. Louis, I think you would've gotten a similar level of crowd engagement with that match just for the nostalgia factor alone.

We got some good promo moments, the burying mediocrity line jumping out (*stares at Austin Theory*), and that clip of Cena saying "I am going to ruin wrestling", deadpanning into the hardcam will get run the likes of which few wrestling memes ever have. Beyond that, though, Cena's defined end goal being that he wants to take the lineal WWE Championship into retirement with him, so they have to start from scratch with a V2 belt, isn't a bad angle to go with here. That, and I like the whole "You're insane if you think you're getting me for [x] amount of more matches. I can just come out here and talk about nothing for 20 more TV tappings and you will cheer for it." bit.

Additionally, while there's not much about Cena's heel presentation that I'd consider good, I do like the blank titantron with the default "John Cena" text across the screens. Not too unfamilair from when Tommaso Ciampa had the static titantron with a chorus of boos effectively being his entrance music in 2018 NXT.

What's Gone Wrong

The quicker we can forget that trainwreck of a WrestleMania main event the better, but just let it sink in that John Cena's final appearance in the biggest show of the year will be remembered not for John Cena breaking the Ric Flair title record, instead for a medicore wrestling match featuring a 10-minute Travis Scott entrance, a run in spot that took way to long for it's own good, a Cody belt shot spot that made him look like a moron, and with literal millions of fans collectively wondering where Dwayne Johnson is. The elusive "everyone loses" Main Event, if you will.

While the Backlash outing was ultimately better than Mania, a VERY low bar to clear, we're clearly not going to get a high-quality match in this run outside of maybe the eventual Punk match, and dare I say a Cody rematch should they revisit that before the end of the year. Quite frankly, not helping matters early on here is that both of Cena's singles matches in 2025 have gone in excess of 25 minutes. The best match in a WWE main roster setting in the last 10 years (Iyo Sky vs. Bianca Belair vs. Rhea Ripley just a matter of weeks ago, literally hours before Cena's match) lasted 14 minutes and 16 seconds.

Not that I'd want or expect Cena matches to be 100 mph from the get-go all the way to the finish at this juncture, but this is a scenario where less is more, and they could convey the in-ring stories they need to without overexposing Cena's natural limitations at age 48. Finally, a pet peeve here is you can clearly catch Cena calling out spots in both matches as clear as day, which is not great if he's going to be quarterbacking matches this entire run like you think he will. Not a new thing with Cena, but that took me out of the Cody matchup quickly.

Lastly, we get to the storyline/character front. At the time of publishing, it had been 72 days since Elimination Chamber, and we still haven't gotten a hint of story development about Cena's connection with the Rock. They had both guys in the building at Eliminator Chamber, and not one person thought that maybe shooting a pretape or two would've been a good idea to give viewers some context? That said, this is one of the few things you can't entirely blame on Ol Dwayne, since they've had more than enough TV time to address things and have decided not to for whatever reason. Then there's the lack of substance of Cena's character at the moment, and ultimately, why they haven't delved into why he's "turned on the fans" now and not at any other point since 2006 is also a bit jarring.

WWE's audience has been given minimal incentive to provide Cena with genuine heat, and a great indicator of that is the two curtain calls he got in Vegas and St. Louis just as WrestleMania and Backlash were about to go off the air. Listening to some (not all) of his promo work, it feels like Cena is playing a character more than being the character, making much of what he's doing ring hollow. Just listen to him and his cadence from last week's go-home SmackDown. Ironically enough, this feels very '07 Randy Orton-esque (derogatory).

Luckily for the Fed, they have a genuinely good opportunity to really heat up Cena in this short program with R-Truth over the next few weeks. Whether or not they capitalize on it remains to be seen, but I'm not exactly hopeful given that Road Dogg is SmackDown's lead booker and can't book consistently good TV as is, and he only has two tapings before Saturday Night's Main Event to get things moving.

The Endgame?

Should we get to TD Garden, the largely assumed final venue Cena will work in, in the final months of 2025, and Cena drops the belt to Rhodes, that's nothing short of booking malpractice. While the ex-Champion wouldn't be the worst option, and given the fact still has a decent amount of time left in his career (he plans to stop wrestling full-time by age 45, and will turn 40 late next month), being the guy to definitively end John Cena should be a stamp of approval moment for someone less established. I would say the only established guy who should even be considered is Sami Zayn.

The reality is you can't bank on your backbone performers (Rollins, KO, Zayn, Drew, Cody, Seth and Punk) forever, and one of your top draws in Romain Reigns is rapidly approching the finish line and has performed like he's been one foot out the door since Maina 39 outside of the titular event the next two years. It seemingly appears that one of the more logical options to get that "rub", Bron Breakker, is clearly getting crowned down the line in a program with Seth Rollins, which I imagine will be spectacular given who's all involved. NXT Champion Oba Femi, a more than worthwhile option and one of the more exciting super-heavyweight "prospects" in recent memory, doesn't appear to have a clear call-up timetable at the moment, and based on historical precident, I'd have little faith in WWE pulling the trigger on him in this fashion, even though they probably should if presented the oppurtunity.

If they were to go down this route, that would realistically leave two people: Dominik Mysterio, who's begun to get very favorable reactions both during and after his IC title victory, and who could easily move over to SmackDown with more than enough time to set up a program with Cena. I would say the son of Rey is already a made man and has improved a ton in the last year or so, but if WWE wants to drive that home, this would be the way.

The other option, my preferred option, who's already on the blue brand, would be Carmelo Hayes: A Massachusetts native like Cena, and another former NXT Champion who's been given by far the worst creative hand compared to his other Performance Center contemporaries who've been called up around the same time and then after. Also considering that he's worked a grand total of three PPV matches (all losses) since being called up in April of 2024, one of which was the Royal Rumble Match this January, and he just lost his first match in a month after winning the "Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal" on 'Mania weekend, and currently is serving as a job guy for MIKE F**KING MIZANIN, I'm not exactly holding my breath. Genuinely embarrassing how badly they've treated him on the main roster after a phenomenal NXT run.

Wasting Opportunity

If we get beyond Summer Slam and we're still doing pure nostalgia, role reversal, feuds with Cena, that's when you'll almost certainly see the red flags on this run come out universally, but I'm mostly there now. Triple H's honeymoon period as lead main roster booker is gone, and this is trending towards being his first major dud. Granted, I think it's more than fair to place most of the blame on the Rock here if that's your view on things, but we've seen no real attempt to make up or improvise for Ol' Dwayne coming in to do his own thing and dip essentially.

Outside of a few of those post-turn promos, there's not much of an effort to push the envelope here, relying heavily on a different flavor of the "all you people" tropes that've been beaten to death over the last 30-plus years, and we haven't seen Cena with any semblance of of a real mean streak or malice yet; some Ruthless Agression if you will.

It also feels clear that WWE's core audience will accept just about anything under the premise of nostalgia farming and "aura-maxxing", which is why you will see some fans go as far as saying "this Cena run is supposed to be bad". This idea, which applies here, and probably more so with the Death Riders (send any and all complaints to @JoshLBarnett) and then the 2024 Young Bucks in All Elite Wrestling, that uncaptivating/un-interesting character work and "intentionally bad" matches should be the new norm for main event caliber heel work in modern American wrestling is genuinely infuriating. I don't know who needs to hear this, but good heels can work great matches and be captivating characters; it's perfectly fine. Honestly, I want to like this Cena run, but the early returns on what was an excellent heel turn in Toronto have been bad; no other way around it.

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