Triple H Gives A Peek Behind The Curtain On Creative Behind John Cena's WWE Heel Turn

One of the most shocking things to happen thus far under the Paul "Triple H" Levesque creative regime of WWE is the heel turn of John Cena at Elimination Chamber when he beat down Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes after punching his ticket to WrestleMania 41. Levesque recently sat down on the "High Performance" podcast and discussed how Cena's heel turn came about after over 20 years of being the company's biggest babyface. He said that when he first spoke to Cena ahead of the beginning of his retirement tour, Cena was willing to do whatever, including winning or losing every match.

"We started to talk about it... the safe thing to do is a year-long tour where he goes town-to-town and he does his greatest hits and it's safe and it's easy and it's fun," Levesque said. "But, as a performer, you're sort of going through the motions. You're playing the same concert you've played a million times and people love it... But, I went to John and said, 'What if we pulled the level that no one wanted to ever pull and we turn you heel,' because, to me, it sort of felt like, 'If you never do it, we kind of just left that dangling there."

Levesque said he pitched exactly what went down at Elimination Chamber to Cena in one of their first phone calls. He said he always felt like a heel needed to be justified in the "why," and believed Cena's character is with how the fans have treated him over the years.

"[He's thinking] 'I've done everything the right way. You've told me I suck. You've booed me. You've told me I'm 'Super Cena,' I can't wrestle,'" he explained. "All these things he's overcome for 25 years, you can now flip that on them and be bitter."

Levesque explained that the heel turn makes sense to him from Cena's character standpoint, as the character is thinking his time is running out. He said that Cena might not think he's as strong or as fast as he once was, so he believed he needed to "sell out" and cheat and do the things he wouldn't have done earlier in his career because of "Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect," but now, he's desperate in his last hours. Levesque said though Cena was surprised at how he had thought it through, "The Leader of the Cenation" was on board.

"When we go through that and John and I talk about it and John is like, 'Wow. I didn't think that was where you were going to go with this. That's bold. But I f****** love it,'" Levesque said. "He was like, 'I love it because I could be safe and I could be easy and I could come in and I could phone this in and I could do my greatest hits and move on, or I could be challenged. This is challenging to me. This is a juicy role.'"

Though Cena is working heel now ahead of his WrestleMania 41 championship match against Rhodes, Levesque said it's always possible he retires as a babyface in the eyes of fans once this is all over in December. For now, Cena and Rhodes are set to clash in the main event of night two of WrestleMania, and Cena is the man advertised for Monday's "WWE Raw" after WrestleMania.