WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle recently took to an episode of his Kurt Angle show podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including why fans pushed back on John Cena as a top babyface in 2005.
Angle said, “He still had room for improvement, but he was getting better. This was strictly for me to get John over. The thing with John is they were pushing him hard from the beginning. They start him out as a babyface, turn him heel for a minute, and put him back. Babyface The fans were like, I don’t know this guy. I listen, they’ve done this with many wrestlers and they’ve messed up with many wrestlers. The Rock is a good example. They started out as a babyface. Fans didn’t want to accept them. They didn’t know him. They didn’t like him. You know, they were booing him. And the more they pushed the rock, the more the fans were like, ‘I hate this guy.’ They did it with me. They did it with Roman Reigns. They did it with John Cena. They should start these guys out as heels and keep them heel for a while until they get over. And then you can turn them into babyface. And John, they were pushing him really hard to be a babyface at this time. And the fans weren’t taking it. They were like, ‘We know they’re pushing this guy and we’re not going to accept them until we want to accept them.’ That’s how the fans are.”
He talked about if WWE considered turning Cena heel and whether they considered changing the style of the match.
“No. And the reason is they weren’t going to turn John heel. They were going to keep him as a babyface while he was champion. So there was no reason to change the match because we weren’t going to change the format of who was baby and who was heel. They were going to keep me heel. They were going to keep John Babyface. So we didn’t have any reason to do that. Even though the fans were negative about John on this night, this particular night, sometimes the fans would cheer John, depending on who he worked with. But for some reason, the fans really liked me at this point in time. Yeah, it was so hard for me to be a heel. I mean, I, you know, I was saying offensive stuff, like I’m not a fan of black people and, you know, like it was just ridiculous, the shit I was saying. And the fans were still cheering for me and it was like, Right, how can I be a heel like these fans? You know? But it was a blessing in disguise. It was cool to be over and for the fans to cheer for me, but I was trying to get them to boo me. If I were to pick one person in the world to make them tap out, it would be Jesus, right?”
Angle also talked about if he had any conversations with Cena on how he felt about being booed.
“No, because I knew he had humility about it and I didn’t want to, like, go to him and say, hey, don’t worry about that. You know, you’re going to get it back. Fans will start cheering for you. I didn’t want to make him feel like he wasn’t doing his job right when he was. He really was. There was nothing wrong with John Cena except the fact that the company was shoving them down people’s throats. That was the only thing that was going on that was wrong.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
