John Cena Refuses To Address The Rock's Involvement In WWE Heel Run

John Cena isn't looking backward with just 11 dates to go in his WWE retirement tour.

Since announcing his end of 2025 retirement at SummerSlam last year, Cena has had a wild final year of competition. Cena became a 17-time world champion (the first in history), wrestled in the main event of WrestleMania and SummerSlam, and wrestled some nostalgia dream matches against the likes of CM Punk, Randy Orton, R-Truth, and others.

Cena also turned heel.

Bad guy John Cena was hard to imagine and hard to get behind for fans and seemingly Cena himself during the turn's final days. One of the issues the heel turn faced was a lack of follow-up involvement from The Rock. The Rock was a central figure in the Cena heel turn itself, but was asbent for any kind of narrative conclusion.

Cena was asked about whether or not The Rock's lack of involvment hurt his heel run at a recent Fan Expo event in Chicago and the WWE legend refused to acknowledge whether or not he would have liked to have seen things go other ways.

“What I’m hearing is in a hypothetical universe what different choices would you make? I will answer that with hindsight, it’s a waste of time. We must live right here and now in the excitement and adventure, we got 11 dates left. After we’ll be able to talk about all this bupkis in January after the whole thing is over, but we’ve taken the audience on a hell of a ride this year and we still got a ways left to go, so I’m excited about that.”
John Cena (h/t Wrestle Ops)

Instead of an appearance from The Rock to push the heel turn to another level at WrestleMania this year, Travis Scott showed up instead to negative fanfare from the WWE Universe.

John Cena says Cody Rhodes lit a fire under him at SummerSlam

John Cena vs. Cody Rhodes in a Street Fight for the Undisputed WWE Championship at SummerSlam this year was a five-star match and important for Cena's final retirement run in WWE.

In the same Fan Expo Chicago event, Cena said the match with Rhodes lit a fire under him again. The bout featured multiple finishers, near falls, drama, and a clear babyface Cena character, after he shed the heel act on Smackdown.

John Cena has 11 days left on his WWE retirement tour and the next stop is a Clash in Paris match against Logan Paul on August 31.

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