John Cena recently appeared on The Pat McAfee Show where he discussed being close to turning heel in 2012 during his feud with The Rock.
Cena explained that for it to work, he should’ve changed completely, but expressed gratitude for getting to play a coherent character which allowed him to experience something like the Firefly Funhouse match: “I remember Vince toyed with the idea of turning me heel versus The Rock in Miami. I said, ‘No problem, I understand, I’ll do it. Just remember that we are so deep in at this point that we can’t do it and then jump back because we’ll be sunk at both ends.’ If we do it, I have to be the opposite of virtue, I have to be pure evil and we go all in.’ From a believability standpoint, people always see me in uniform because I want people to know that what they see is someone they can relate to. He decided against it and at that point he said, ‘I don’t think we’re ever going to do it.’ I have the luxury of playing this character, but I always play this character, which is great because it got me to dive into nuances like the Firefly Fun House match where I was like, ‘what if I have a meta experience through all of my flaws, all my timeline,’ and do stuff like that.”
