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John Cena is widely considered to be one of the greatest WWE Superstars of all time.
With the exception of his first year in WWE, the 16-time World Champion was among the most featured Superstars on WWE television throughout his full-time run with the company. This meant he almost always found himself in a meaningful storyline at the top of the card.
In recent years, John Cena has mentioned in media interviews that he is happy to perform in whatever role WWE has for him when making sporadic on-screen appearances.
Before WrestleMania 36, for example, he told Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina that “there is no job too small” for him at 'Mania. He explained he trusted the storytelling abilities of Vince McMahon and WWE’s creative team.
Now, John Cena has adopted that same mindset when it comes to his WWE storylines and matches in 2020. However, plenty of stories have emerged over the years about Big Match John pitching his own ideas.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at five John Cena ideas that WWE's higher-ups approved.
#5 John Cena’s ideas were used in the Firefly Funhouse match
Bray Wyatt defeated the returning John Cena in a cinematic Firefly Funhouse match on the second night of WrestleMania 36.
Although Shane McMahon’s WWE character did not feature on television around the time of WrestleMania, he still played an important role behind the scenes on the day of tapings.
Speaking on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast in September 2020, McMahon revealed that John Cena really wanted the match to succeed. Not just for himself, but also for his opponent and many of his ideas ended up being used.
“Kudos to John Cena for thinking outside the box. An immense amount of that was really, really pushed by him, and John wanted Bray to do very well with it and have it be a showcase for him. So very unselfish, and again, whether you liked it or hated it, it was something that we wanted to make different than what we do traditionally in ring.” [H/T Wrestling Inc.]
John Cena was originally supposed to face Wyatt's "The Fiend" character in front of over 70,000 fans at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, WWE held WrestleMania 36 without any fans in attendance at the Performance Center training facility in Orlando.
#4 John Cena helped with the spinner WWE Championship design
In 2005, John Cena introduced a spinner version of the WWE Championship. The title, which lasted until 2013, is generally viewed as the most controversial WWE Championship design in history.
John Cena’s legendary rivalry with Edge in the mid-2000s was the subject of a WWE Untold episode on the WWE Network in September 2020.
During a segment about the bold title design, John Cena revealed that he played a big role in creating the polarizing WWE Championship.
“How I was about the spinner Championship belt -- I was much more involved and meticulous about the design. Where the diamonds should be, the size of the diamonds, the shape of the spinner, the size of the diamonds on the inside of the spinner, where the colored gems should be, the difference in metal, what the leather should feel like. Like, I was so much more into that.” [H/T Fightful]
While John Cena liked the unique WWE Championship design, the man behind the Edge character – Adam Copeland – certainly did not. The Rated-R Superstar admitted that he “hated” the title and did not think his character would want a spinner version of the WWE Championship.
#3 John Cena wanted to face The Big Show and Edge
John Cena and Edge were originally supposed to renew their rivalry in a WWE World Heavyweight Championship singles match at WrestleMania XXV.
However, as The Big Show recalled on a 2019 episode of WWE Network show Photo Shoot, he jokingly suggested to John Cena in early 2009 that they should face each other at that year’s WrestleMania.
“I was teasing John, I was like, ‘Hey man, I don’t have an opponent for WrestleMania. If you know anybody that needs a dance partner…’”
The seven-foot Superstar knew that John Cena vs. Edge was already the plan for WrestleMania. He was therefore surprised when his former on-screen rival went to Vince McMahon and suggested that the match should become a Triple Threat.
“I already knew he was working with Edge, so I was just joking and saying, ‘What’s up?’ We go on the bus that night to go to the building and John told me he was going to put me in the angle and talk to Vince.”
McMahon approved the pitch and John Cena ended up winning the World Heavyweight Championship from Edge in the Triple Threat match.
#2 The SummerSlam 2010 finish was John Cena's idea
Team WWE (led by John Cena) defeating The Nexus at SummerSlam 2010 has gone down as one of the most talked-about match outcomes in WWE history.
WWE’s decision-makers originally planned for The Nexus (led by Wade Barrett) to pick up a statement-making victory. They faced a team of WWE all-stars (John Cena, Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, Daniel Bryan, Edge, John Morrison and R-Truth) in the main event of SummerSlam, but the finish was switched on the day of the show.
It has been speculated over the last decade that it was John Cena’s idea to “bury” The Nexus. However, the man himself seemingly denied that rumor at a Q&A in 2017. The five-time WrestleMania main-eventer clarified that, while he is allowed to pick certain moments that go into WWE’s stories, he does not pick how the story is told.
Chris Jericho and Edge reflected on the controversial match during a 2013 episode of Talk Is Jericho. The two Superstars, who came up with lots of ideas for the seven-on-seven encounter, had already been eliminated by the time that John Cena was left in a two-on-one situation with Justin Gabriel and Wade Barrett at the end of the match.
Jericho said John Cena’s idea to kick out of a DDT on the floor before defeating his two opponents was “the dumbest thing”, but that is exactly what ended up happening.
John Cena later told Jericho and Edge that he was wrong and he should have taken their advice.
#1 John Cena’s theme song and album were his ideas
Speaking on Billboard's Ballin' Out podcast in 2016, John Cena explained the creative process behind the entrance music that he used on WWE SmackDown during his run as The Doctor of Thuganomics earlier in his career.
“At WWE, we have the opportunity to define your character as much as you want, so when I got the opportunity to rap on television, they gave me some stock music that was so bad.”
John Cena went on to say that, while WWE has produced good rock ‘n’ roll themes over the years, he felt that he needed to record his own hip hop music because the company’s original music was not good enough.
“You could tell that WWE, to its credit, does rock ‘n’ roll very well. It did not understand hip hop culture and I was like, 'Well, I'm not any good, but I can do better than this,' and I went into a friend's studio and recorded my original theme music that I used for a year or so and it was better than what they gave me.” [H/T Wrestling Inc.]
During the interview, John Cena also revealed that it was his idea to record a rap album, You Can’t See Me (2005). He got in the studio to record "The Time Is Now" and realized that he could easily make eight or nine songs.
