Former WWE Champion John Cena was interviewed on After The Bell with Corey Graves. We have a few highlights below but it’s worth checking out the entire interview.
John Cena on how he returned to WWE:
“Well, that’s certainly a happening that’s beyond my control. I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of things on the movie and television side lined up, none of which I can talk about. We’re in the middle of a labor dispute. Then the labor dispute happens and the Screen Actors Guild decides as an entirety to go on strike which either leaves me idle or asking questions of, ‘Well, what can I do? What is within my control?’ I wanted to see if it was okay to come back to tour so we, you know, called the proper people at SAG. We got written, legal okay that it’d be okay to come back to WWE and once I had that, then I could ask the question of, ‘Hey, WWE, do you guys want me to come back and hang out for a little bit?’ So here we are.”
On getting to go to NXT and talk with new talent:
“I really do love being here. It’s why I enjoy going to NXT, and I don’t mean just being in that wonderful arena that they have, which is 450 loudest people I’ve ever heard. I go there on my days off to talk with talent, to the Superstars like, ‘Hey, what’s on your mind? No question is off limits. Go for it.’ My wife is kind enough, she knows that when I leave in the morning, I’m not coming back until 10 at night. I spend the whole day there just talking with Superstars trying to absorb, and they teach me hopefully as much as I teach them. I love this.”
“I think that’s another reason because sometimes if you chart most everybody’s trajectories, sure we have some long term players, Flair, Undertaker, but usually it’s you have this short block of time where you are on fire and then you either turn bad, or you take a little break. Then you come back and you take a little break. Then you come back and you take a little break, and when you come back, there is a sense of nostalgia and romanticizing and a sense of like, wow, I might have missed this the first time around so I am certainly grateful for the attendance and the support, but that’s just kind of the nature of the beast, and as long as I continue to give heart and soul, which that’s the one thing that I can control is how much I give every day, hopefully everybody will be on board.”
“I promise you this. If I stayed on TV, if I stayed doing every show, it would be back to being polarizing because that’s just the nature of our audience, and that’s great. I never cared about the noise. My biggest fear was apathy, that non-focused silence. There’s even the sound of focused silence, but that non-focused silence is when you’re dead in the water. It was really one of my main points the last time we spoke when I was speaking about Austin Theory and nothing I said to Austin out there I wouldn’t say to his face. We still talk on a regular basis and I still try to bestow on him advice. I think he’s working more towards connecting with the audience, but I could hear the silence of apathy when he would perform and I know it is because I had plenty. I single handedly ruined the Ruthless Aggression Era, completely failing by being the Ruthless Aggression guy and completely failing. So I know what apathetic silence sounds like and that was just my one fear.”
On the business evolving:
“I certainly romanticize my era and I romanticize my style of work and my style is very different than everyone else’s. If this was 1996, my style would be everyone’s style. If this was 1989, my style would be everyone’s style. But I had the luxury of learning from all of these really skilled people who worked in a very improvisational manner to give the audience their money’s worth. That’s all we’re trying to do. We’re trying to pack people in this place and send them home happy so they tell a friend, and they come back again, and in doing so they get a favorite personality. ‘I like this Superstar. F this guy. I want to see him get his butt kicked.’ It’s going to bring them back and that’s the nature of what we do. It’s Sports Entertainment so we have to make entertaining stories.”
“I do want to romanticize about, like, I just don’t get it. If every time I catch myself saying that, the follow up is, ‘No. I don’t get it.’ The business changes. It’s evolved. We used to be a live event company. Now we’re a content company. So I can understand why we want to produce stuff extra slick and we want to make things look incredible and as crisp as they can. I can understand Superstars’ trepidation for maybe not wanting to improv in the ring, because again, I’m the loudest talker in the business, but they shoot everything in Super HD and they mic everything and these are things that didn’t happen when I started, but that’s a hats off to our production department for knowing my style and working with me, but I can understand why the talent has evolved past that.”
“Just because it’s something that I like to do and the way I like to operate, I always preface any anecdote, any advice, any piece of information with a great thing about Sports Entertainment and WWE is its chicken soup. There is no right or wrong way to do it and everyone has their own recipe. We can all make three different great chicken soups and they can all be very different. Every performer can have their own style and it can work for everyone. You know, there have been so many Hall of Famers that operate under a different construct. I get a little frustrated because I see no one in practice of what I used to do, maybe one, and that’s Roman Reigns, which is just feeling the energy of the audience and using all the drills you’ve done and all the fall downs that you’ve had, to wait for the right time to do stuff, and Roman is a very improvisational guy and works that style, and man, he’s really incredible.”
On why he feels Roman Reigns is the greatest of all time:
“He’s a sponge. He’s athletic and super intelligent. He’s a fan of this, and I mean all of this, and most importantly, a fan of psychology. I say the WWE Universe is the biggest superstar we have. Roman navigated those waters without them. Here’s the thing with Roman. I don’t think Roman is Roman if he doesn’t have a time to work in front of no crowds because the crowd was so against the fact that the company believed in Roman Reigns. I set the precedent of the company guy, so everyone has a tough hill to climb once they become pushed and there’s a giant worry behind the curtain. We all know that too. We all know, okay, we got to be careful with how this happens because we don’t want ‘this’ to happen. That absolutely happened with Roman. Then it was when the crowd wasn’t there that Joe could take more chances and that Roman could be himself. There wasn’t anyone to be like, that sucked or didn’t work, because you don’t have instant feedback. So night after night, he becomes this extremely nuanced, soft spoken character, which is not the (yelling) ‘Welcome to SmackDown’ that they’re used to and as soon as they bring people back in, he had done such riveting programming, that it’s like, ‘Man, now I want to see this guy’, and he has just done it better than I’ve ever seen. He’s the greatest of all time in my opinion.”
If there is anything else he wants to accomplish before his wrestling career is over:
“The great thing about WWE is there’s always another show and there’s always something to accomplish. I think individuals tend to look at it selfishly. Can I win a 17th championship? I haven’t won the Intercontinental Championship. I want to win another Money in the Bank. I want to win another Royal Rumble. It could be like, I’d like to help Roman Reigns become a larger global phenomenon. I would like to be Austin Theory’s mentor. I would like to do as many live events as I possibly can because physically I’m able to do them and just give the yield of trying to give whatever I have left to an audience that cares, while they care. I don’t look at accomplishments from the perspective of, ‘I need to win another championship.’ I need to do this. I just need a chance to get out there in any capacity and then I want to be able to take that, okay, what’s the hand I was dealt? I’m gonna try to play this the best I can. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things to possibly accomplish.”
“The sad struggle that I have every day is I’m 46, I’ll be 47 in April, and everyone is so skilled that I can’t do the things I used to do anymore and I don’t know if you’ve been watching my stuff, but I don’t do that much. So I also want to be able to contribute to the WWE and then walk away from it, and I mean, like, walk away from it, not all hunched over and not broken and beaten but appreciative and healthy with a perspective of this is a great chapter in the story of my life and one that has made me who I am.
On he would like his story in WWE to end:
“I love that question because again, there’s a lot of different perspectives, right? Anyone else sitting here would probably craft a scenario where, ‘Oh, in my mind, the perfect thing to do is this, at this event, with this individual.’ I just want to do what’s best for WWE. That has been my order of operations since I walked in this building. It hasn’t changed. It’s my way of thinking, but it’s done me pretty well. So I think when I’m courageous enough to express to those making choices, like hey, this is it, I do what they tell me to do because I believe in full faith that they are doing what’s best for business. So whenever it comes to an end, and it will, whatever is deemed the best thing for the WWE is exactly what will be the perfect moment. Period.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
