John Cena Planned 'S--tty Main Event' After Historic Heel Turn vs. Cody Rhodes for WWE WrestleMania

The much-criticized WrestleMania 41 main event between John Cena and Cody Rhodes was put together with the intention of not being a good match.

On the new season of WWE Unreal (h/t Andrew Ravens of WrestlingNews.co), Cena explained during his heel run last year he planned a "s--tty main event" for WWE's biggest show of the year as part of his commitment to being a bad guy:

"What does that mean to ruin wrestling? That means to take the fun away from the fans. That means to win that championship with methodical, catastrophically boring work. To make people like, 'F--k this guy.' It was like, 'That's it? What a shtty main event.' Yup, that's what I was going for. Watch the next one."

Cena did admit his approach was more risky than WWE was willing to go along with, so he pulled it back enough to avoid fans turning on the entire promotion.

"Then I was explaining like that was too boring," explained Cena. "That was too bad. I think people are going to stop going. The perspective was, 'Hey, this isn't heat on you. This is heat on the company.'"

The Cena-Rhodes match was largely panned, though there were many contributing to the response beyond Cena's desire to wrestle a boring style in his heel persona.

Since the entire Cena heel storyline was set up by him aligning with The Rock, it was assumed the Final Boss would be involved somehow.

Instead, there was no appearance from The Rock and a lot from Travis Scott. The finish also made Rhodes, who was supposed to be the top babyface, look silly when he opted not to hit Cena with a title belt when his opponent feigned begging forgiveness.

Cena hit Rhodes with a low blow and the belt to get the pin, winning his record 17th world title. He held the championship for four months before losing it to Rhodes at SummerSlam, turning back to a babyface in the process.

Even though Cena's heel turn ultimately didn't prove to be a long-term success, the shock in the moment when it happened at Elimination Chamber remains one of the great WWE surprises in recent memory.