In a recent episode of 1 Of A Kind, Rob Van Dam and former WWE referee Mike Chioda discussed John Cena's potential heel turn. Here are some key highlights:

RVD on Cena’s turn:

“I think that I feel the people everywhere excited about it, you know? Everyone’s talking and you know, since he’s on his way out he doesn’t have to worry about recovering from the image, as far as like, the Make A Wish Foundation. If you think long term like you’re talking about, if he did it a couple years ago still under contract, then it would be hard to bring him back around or whatever. Now they don’t have to worry about it. That’s not part of this last chapter.”

Chioda on the John Cena heel turn:

“I get it, but I think it’s a little bit too late, maybe. In his prime like, I remember there’s some years — I mean I’ve been gone on four or five years. I remember the time a couple years prior to that, like Cena was rocking and rolling and stuff and like he’s just babyface, right? So he’s making all kinds of money on his merch. And it was funny because like I remember Rey Mysterio and some of the boys were like, ‘Hey man, I want to put a stand, there ain’t no f**king merch of mine up there, right? It’s all John Cena.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, no wonder.’ I said, ‘Vince and him are killing it on the merch.’ So they never wanted to turn him f**king heel, because they’re making so much money on the merch. And I believe it was because of the big things he was doing for Make a Wish and stuff. So he was doing huge things there and being a healer, I don’t know, it’s different. Your merch goes down, and it was all the money thing. So now there’s no money in merch, right? He’s getting his big contracts, and now he turns heel. I just think it might — I think it would have been, you know they want him about seven years ago, turn heel. But we’ll see how it turns out.”

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— Ben Kerin Mar 15, 2025 09:19AM