Netflix probably upset with WWE over John Cena's heel turn; wrestling veteran explores possible reasons (Exclusive)

Modified Mar 08, 2025 11:02 GMT

John Cena turned heel at the Elimination Chamber [Image: WWE.com]

Former WWE head writer Vince Russo recently spoke about Netflix's possible reaction to John Cena's heel turn. The star recently embraced his dark side and assaulted Cody at Elimination Chamber.

The streaming platform recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal to air WWE's flagship show Monday Night RAW from 2025. Since the move to Netflix, SmackDown has moved to a three-hour slot every Friday on the USA Network.

This week on BroDown with host Mac Davis, Russo felt there was no way to defend WWE's lackluster attitude with their biggest storyline. He felt Netflix would have been irate when they got to know that none of the three major stars in the storyline, namely The Rock, John Cena, and Cody Rhodes would be on the RAW following the PLE.

"Don't even attempt to defend that. There's no defense for that whatsoever. You do a major angle like this, you know you're gonna have a huge audience tune in Monday night and you're gonna take a big steaming dump in the middle of the week. Don't even try to defend that. And then aside from all that, the week before, February 24, that was their lowest rating since they've been on Netflix. So here we are, the next week we do that major angle on the pay-per-view, none of the three are on Netflix. How do you think Netflix feels about that? We paid billions and billions of dollars on this and none of these guys are gonna be on the show?" [From 9:30 onwards]

There has been no sign of John Cena after Elimination Chamber. This week on SmackDown, Cody threw down a challenge and asked his challenger to bring it all at WrestleMania 41.

If you use the quotes, please embed the YouTube video and add an H/T to Sportskeeda for the transcript.

About the author

Prityush is a WWE news writer for Sportskeeda Wrestling who started watching wrestling in the later part of The Attitude Era. Although he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Prityush was a creative writer for his college, and his flair for creativity and love of pro wrestling eventually led him to the journalism field. After an initial stint in 2016-2017, he has been writing regularly for Sportskeeda since 2021.

As someone who loves and respects the business, he prides himself on factual, clean, and ethical reporting, free of plagiarism and AI usage. One of the ways he ensures this is by transcribing videos that he reports on.

Prityush had the privilege of interviewing superstar Matt Hardy in his career so far. Although, his favorite wrestler is CM Punk, as he relates to his Straight Edge philosophy.

When he is not reporting news, he loves reading and collecting WWE action figures. He currently owns over 500 wrestling figures and merchandise.

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Edited by Arsh Das