Jim Ross says John Cena simply moved too much merchandise to ever be turned heel.
John Cena reached a level of popularity in the mid to late 2000s, where, in many people's eyes, he was the WWE. However, many die-hard fans grew tired of John Cena's schtick and eagerly anticipated and called for John Cena to shake up his character and turn heel.
On his podcast, Jim Ross answered a fan question as to whether or not he had ever personally pitched a heel turn to John Cena. For Jim Ross, he would never dare as the proof was in the pudding.
“I never pitched it to him. No, because the data that we could obtain and utilize, simply put, the merchandise sales. Things of that nature that were always somewhat babyface oriented. Not as much today, but in that era, certainly it was. I didn't see any reason to lessen the opportunity to keep selling merchandise,” Ross began. “I also knew, as I told you earlier, that I thought that the booing of John Cena was because we overexposed him and the fact he kept getting chance after chance after chance. That was kind of like the Roman Reigns thing. It was the wrong positioning and somebody wasn't paying attention.”
Later in the podcast, Conrad Thompson would ask if John Cena's amazing work with Make-a-Wish would have ever been possible after a heel turn. Ross said he didn't think so and he equated that to another large reason as to why John Cena never turned to the dark side.
He stated, “it didn't make sense to me. I think that everybody agreed with that and I'm sure John had some input on that as well. Making these wishes for these terminally ill children and making a wish is very important to John Cena. It's not just a gimmick to get a nice photo op. It's not that. He's done hundreds and hundreds of these that never made air. He was never looking to make good publicity out of helping terminally ill children. It's still important to him. So that's a good reason. It's the right reason. It has never made organic sense for John Cena to become a heel. Sorry, folks.”
We did get a glimpse of what it would be like to have John Cena as a villain during the bizarre Firefly Fun House match at WrestleMania 36. You can see our live coverage of that match at this link.
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