Stone Cold Steve Austin Honestly Addresses John Cena’s WWE Heel Turn

Even days after his official retirement, John Cena’s 2025 heel turn is one of the hotly debated subjects in WWE.

Many critics and fans have voiced their opinions on it, and now Stone Cold Steve Austin has jumped on the bandwagon.

The former WWE Champion recently appeared as a guest on Chris Van Vliet’s Insight podcast, where he discussed Cena’s controversial storyline, claiming that he neither hated nor liked it.

Austin joined the Stamford promotion in 1995 under the ring name ‘The Ringmaster.’ At the time, he played a heel, aligning himself with Ted DiBiase, who awarded him the Million Dollar Championship.

Considering the gimmick to be weak, he requested a change to his character, thus becoming Stone Cold Steve Austin. The character immediately got over with the audience, who liked him despite his initial heel persona, forcing WWE to transition him into a babyface.

John Cena, too, became a babyface after initially portraying a heel character. He did not turn for over two decades until the 2025 Elimination Chamber, when he turned on Cody Rhodes and aligned with The Rock.

Stone Cold Steve Austin Did Not Hate Nor Like John Cena’s Heel Turn

During the podcast, Stone Cold Steve Austin spoke about his 2001 heel turn, which failed, and was often used as an example to define Cena’s heel turn.

Everybody — not everybody — a lot of people wanted to see at least one John Cena heel turn in his run. It was okay. It was okay, you know? I like him better as a babyface. I wanted to see him as a heel at some point during his career. The way that it was done — and I’m not knocking booking — just like, man, this far in? Forget about it. Just let him do his thing, f**king kids love that guy.

Steve Austin turned heel at WrestleMania 17. He admitted on the show that it was a weak creative decision.

Nobody wanted me to turn heel, but I was just set on turning heel because I’ve always liked working heel so much. It didn’t work. It wasn’t successful. We got a chance to, you know, push the character in different directions and different dimensions. But I don’t think we were really ringing up the box office doing that. [H/T: Wrestlingnews.co]