WWE: Triple H on John Cena Heel Turn Creative Process, Triple H Wanted Tiffany Stratton to Apologize Over Controversial Promo Segment at 4/4 SmackDown Show, Dropped Idea for Kevin Owens to Defeat Cody Rhodes for WWE Title At Elimination Chamber

Triple H Reveals John Cena Heel Turn Creative Process

As noted before, this past March’s WWE Elimination Chamber 2025 event featured John Cena turning heel and aligning himself with the “Final Boss” The Rock.

In an episode of WWE’s recently released WWE Unreal docuseries on Netflix, WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque gave his thoughts about the creative process that led to Cena’s heel turn and him talking to rapper Travis Scott before Cena about the plans for the heel turn.

“There are five that I talk to with a move this big. There’s Rock. Obviously, It’s Cody. Cena. Travis Scott, who we want to help build this idea around, and then WWE President Nick Khan. My first call is to Nick. I run the idea by him. Nick basically says, ‘Love all of it.’ My next reach out at that point is to Rock. I hit him with, ‘What if? What if, hear me out on this.’ He just listened and through the conversation would go, ‘Mmhmmm. Mmhmmm.’ I wasn’t sure if he was giving me the ‘Mmhmmm, just get to the end so I can tell you how much I hate this’ or…I got to the end and he was like, ‘Wow, I gotta tell you, I think that’s genius.’ He immediately started riffing thoughts and ideas. We spent another 30 minutes on the phone talking about this and the more we talked about it, the more we were both getting excited and into it. My next conversation was with Travis Scott. I make sure Travis is comfortable with the creative. He loved it and is like, ‘Let’s do this.’ Somewhere in there, Cody hits me back, I get with Cody and when I hit him with it he’s like, ‘Holy shit, I didn’t think that’s what you were going to say. That’s really cool.’

Then, I get with John. John is the best with, ‘Before you say it, if this is what you believe in. I’m in.’ I’m like, ‘John, let’s take the bullshit hat off. This is not the head of creative talking with you and you the performer. I’m asking John Cena the human being. Give me your gut.’ This impacts John Cena the human being, his movies, his PR schedule, everything. ‘Give me your gut. You like it or you don’t.’ He said, ‘I like it a lot, actually.’ I hang up the phone and within a minute or a minute and a half, I got three different texts from him with thoughts and ideas. ‘Alright, he’s engaged.'”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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Triple H Wanted Tiffany Stratton to Apologize Over Controversial Promo Segment at April 4th WWE SmackDown Show

As noted before, Charlotte Flair and current WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton were involved in an incident on the April 4th episode of WWE SmackDown in Chicago, Illinois. This incident revolved around their promo segment going very off script over Stratton bringing up Flair’s personal life issues including her history of failed marriages and Flair responding back implying Ludwig Kaiser was cheating on Stratton.

In an episode of WWE’s recently released WWE Unreal docuseries on Netflix, footage was shown of WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque and SVP of Creative Writing Ed Koskey discussing the incident backstage at the show. It was revealed that Levesque wanted Stratton to apologize to Flair for the divorce line she used during her promo that was not scripted for her to say.

Ed Koskey – “Apparently, it was the divorce line that sent her over the edge. She’s upset. It obviously wasn’t written in the promo.”

Paul “Triple H” Levesque – “I need Tiffany to understand that’s obviously not how we do this. So, she needs to go to Charlotte and apologize and they need to get on the same page.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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WWE Unreal Reveals Dropped Idea for Kevin Owens to Defeat Cody Rhodes for WWE Title in Impromptu Match At Elimination Chamber 2025

A recent episode of WWE’s recently released WWE Unreal docuseries on Netflix featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Seven Bucks Productions SVP Brian Gewirtz discussing Johnson’s storyline feud with Cody Rhodes.

Gerwirtz stated that Johnson had suggested the idea that after Rhodes turned down his offer, he would set up an impromptu match for Rhodes against Kevin Owens at Elimination Chamber 2025 and for Owens to win the Undisputed WWE Championship at the event.

“The prospect of babyface John (Cena) and babyface Cody (Rhodes) felt a little dry to us. But just looking at it from the outside, let’s throw some controlled chaos into this. So, myself and Rock, we got together and we pitched something that was twofold. I had the idea of Cody needing to be Rock’s champion. We had that as the hook. We proposed, at Elimination Chamber, Cody turning down The Final Boss, and that was gonna lead to Final Boss making an impromptu title match right then and there, that resulted in Kevin Owens who had been in a storyline with Cody during that time, leaving with the championship. Kevin Owens winning the title wasn’t the end goal. The takeaway was whatever it is we do, needs to be seismic. That’s the big question. What is Cody gonna say?”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com