John Cena on What His His Heel Character Meant To “Ruin Wrestling” During His Retirement Tour, Why He Wanted Women’s Judgment Day Members Involved In His Survivor Series Match With Dominik Mysterio, His Retirement Ceremony Moment with CM Punk & Cody Rhodes, & More

Netflix released season three of WWE’s WWE: Unreal docuseries on their service earlier today.

During the first episode of season three of WWE: Unreal, John Cena gave his thoughts about his heel character’s goal at wanting to “ruin wrestling” during his retirement tour and what it actually means to “ruin wrestling.”

“What does that mean to ruin wrestling? That means to take the fun away from the fans. That means to win that championship with methodical, catastrophically boring work. To make people like, ‘fuck this guy.’ Everybody’s like, ‘that’s it? What a shitty main event.’ Yup, that’s what I was going for. Watch the next one.’, and then I was explaining like, ‘that was too boring, like, that was too bad, I think people are gonna stop coming.’ The perspective was, ‘hey, this isn’t heat on you, this is heat on the company.’”

WWE CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque responded about the issues with Cena wanting to ruin wrestling and how to some degree, Cena’s instinct was spot on.

“To some degree, John’s instinct was spot on. John earned the spot to be like, ‘okay, well let’s take a shot at it.’ But there was a certain point in time where I was like, ‘this ain’t working.’ You still got to deliver to these people. Hopefully you’ll do it in a manner in which they don’t like that. But you gotta give them your greatness still.”

Cena also gave his thoughts about why he wanted the women members of The Judgement Day group to be involved in his match against Dominik Mysterio at this past November’s Survivor Series: WarGames 2025 event.

“We had the creative freedom to use every paint on the palette. I want the girls to come ringside. I want them physically involved, both in the match in a traditional way of, like, tripping and hitting. But I also want them to hit bombs because it’s believable enough to be like, ‘Oh fuck. The kid could win with that.”

During episode two of season three of WWE: Unreal, CM Punk gave his thoughts about how he pitched the idea for him and Cody Rhodes to place their WWE World Heavyweight and Undisputed WWE titles on Cena’s shoulders during Cena’s in-ring retirement ceremony at this past December’s WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event show.

“I saw a clip, I mean, it’s gotta be 2005, because Batista and Cena are both champs and Hogan’s there. Cena and Batista, they both take their titles off and they put them on Hogan’s shoulders. I think the universe does silly things sometimes, I can’t remember who sent me the clip, but it knew there was a reason I saw it cause I saw it right before that day Cena was retiring, but I just thought it’s symbolic.”

Cena stated that he did not know in advance that Punk and Cody were planning to do that for him on the show.

Cena also gave his thoughts about his match against AJ Styles at WWE Crown Jewel: Perth event this past October and why Rey Mysterio’s 619 move was the one tribute move to other wrestlers that he was unable to perform during their match together.

“I can’t do the 619, but I told AJ (Styles), ‘I’ll drop toe hold you.’ You can see me drop toe hold him, and lean against the ropes and I say ‘Clothesline me, clothesline me so I don’t have to do this move.’”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, & 3, F4WOnline.com