The time is right for The Time Is Now, wrestling’s most maligned anthem

“You don’t get new music because that is my voice on that song and your time is up, my time is now,” said John Cena about his iconic theme song, The Time Is Now, when he turned heel – wrestling speak for became the villain – earlier this year. Cena is inching towards the final leg of his wrestling retirement tour to focus on acting full-time after 23 years with World Wrestling Entertainment, including a date in Perth for WWE Crown Jewel next month.

Most wrestlers undergo such transformations in their careers, oscillating between heel and babyface (hero). Cena debuted as a generic babyface before settling on his white rapper character, the Doctor of Thuganomics, a natural heel who freestyled on the mic as well as in the ring. But his popularity – at least among children and their merchandise-buying parents – soon forced him into the role of a babyface, one he’s inhabited for the better part of two decades.

While his wrestling promos are rarely lyrical any more, he has maintained his all-American look – baggy denim shorts, sneakers in lieu of traditional wrestling boots, bright matching t-shirt and baseball cap boasting aspirational catchphrases like “Hustle, loyalty, respect” and “You want some, come get some” – as well as his signature theme song, a rarity in wrestling except for the most untouchable stars.

Like Cena himself, The Time Is Now has crossed over into the mainstream in a way not often seen in wrestling. The song has found its way to NFL team entrances to Carpool Karaoke to car ads and even Cena’s own Neutrogena commercial this year. In a time when monoculture is extinct, it’s no mean feat that it retains such relevance.

WWE has always had a relationship with the popular music industry, dating back to the “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection” when Captain Lou Albano appeared in Cyndi Lauper’s music video for Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and she in turn escorted Wendi Richter to her match at MTV’s The Brawl to End It All in 1984. Liberace appeared at the first WrestleMania in 1985, and Aretha Franklin performed the national anthem at the third instalment.

The homogenised heavy rock and cartoonishly catchy ditties of the ’80s and ‘90s, composed by long time WWE Music employee Jim Johnston (who departed WWE in 2017), gave way to millennium-era nü-metal. Limp Bizkit and P.O.D. provided theme songs for the likes of The Undertaker and Rey Mysterio respectively, the latter still in use for the 50-year-old luchador.

Wrestling has progressed somewhat to get with the times, at least musically, and many performers make their way to the ring to a soundtrack of fresher, more unique beats by CFO$, the music producers who were with WWE from 2012 to 2020. The producers WWE currently use to create their theme songs, Def Rebel, have courted criticism from fans for uninspired tunes.

But The Time Is Now differs from most wrestling theme songs – certainly in 2005, when Cena began using it – in that it’s a hip-hop song with a robust brass backing band. It was written and performed by Cena himself for his debut (and only) album, 2005’s You Can’t See Me, and was composed alongside his cousin, producer Marc “Trademarc” Predka.

A sample from M.O.P.’s 2000 rap song Ante Up immediately ups the ante before the woodwind intro and Cena’s first verse, which is actually the chorus. (M.O.P. filed a lawsuit against Cena, WWE Music Group, Sony BMG and others for copyright infringement in 2008, which was dropped shortly thereafter.) It’s a bombastic earworm that defies categorisation and subculture.

Perhaps that’s why Cena decided to keep it when he turned heel this year. Tradition dictates that when a wrestler changes their character, they change their aesthetics to match. Think the monochromatic “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan of the late 1990s, a far cry from his red and yellow 1980s glory days, or The Undertaker switching from a funeral procession to a motorbike (hence Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’) as his preferred mode of transportation to and from the ring.

The character pivot was much anticipated by fans who, for the better part of two decades, regarded Cena as a spiritual heel. They would boo his Hogan-like penchant for overcoming the odds and his primary appeal to children (not the precious 18-45-year-old male demographic), and came up with their own lyrics for The Time Is Now, chanting “John Cena sucks!” in tune with it.

But wrestling fans are a fickle bunch and Cena’s departure from the real-life superhero audiences love to hate wasn’t well-received. The timing was off: after 20 years, why change now when fans are primed to give thanks to the person who has, for better or worse, defined a generation of wrestling? Cena might have finally been able to bask in the cheers he’s been courting his whole career.

Common sense prevailed: his heel turn wasn’t long for this world, and Cena has quickly reverted to his trusty babyface demeanour in the final few months of his WWE tenure. The Time Is Now, once a rallying cry against Cena at his infuriatingly “winningest” (he recently collected his 17th world championship, breaking the record set by Ric Flair), has now become a chorus of endearment as Cena marches into retirement to the beat of his own theme song, all while fans trill their appreciation in the most wrestling-coded of jeers: “Let’s go, Cena!/Cena sucks!”

John Cena will appear at the WWE Crown Jewel in Perth on October 11.

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