John Cena says his first WWE heel promo ‘bombed’
John Cena is not afraid to fail.
Cena was at Fan Expo Chicago 2025 this weekend and was asked if was upset at the reaction to his first heel promo, which took place at the March 17, 2025 episode of WWE Raw from Brussels, Belgium. He responded by saying he doesn’t get upset at failing.
“I wasn’t upset. No, I failed,” Cena said at the expo, according to ThePopVerse. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that. You can learn from failure, right? I went up there and bombed. Shit happens.”
“I’ve changed a lot over the years. I’m not the same person I was yesterday,” he continued.
Cena’s promo that night, which came just weeks after his March 1 heel turn at Elimination Chamber, was met with a mixed reaction. Some fans chanted “Let go, Cena” while others chanted “Cena sucks.” He blamed the fans and said he’d been the victim of a dysfunctional relationship with them for 25 years.
“You take and you take and you only care about yourselves,” Cena said to the fans during the promo.
Our own Dave Meltzer commented on Cena’s first heel promo in the March 24, 2025, edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Meltzer wrote:
“The segment, including video introductions, went 32 minutes. Cena’s performance was tremendous even if he relied on the overly tired blaming it all on the fans for his return, the same angle the New Day had just done. He may have had to, because the fear was that since so many fans wanted to see Cena turn and were happy, if he had taken another path he could have ended up cheered.”
John Cena’s promo from the Monday, March 17, 2025, edition of WWE Raw in Brussels, Belgium is available below:
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.