Cody Rhodes has plenty of good things to say about working with John Cena. He also has one gripe, and he says it is an open secret in the locker room.
Speaking on Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Rhodes explained that wrestlers typically communicate mid-match in a coded shorthand meant to stay between the two people in the ring.
“John is pretty great at the magic, except for one area that is widely known to wrestling fans and wrestlers. John will not talk low or in carney, as we would say,” Rhodes said. “Like if I need to tell you, ‘Amy, duck the clothesline,’ I’d say like, ‘Dizuck.'”
Cena, by Rhodes’ telling, does the opposite.
“John yells everything that’s gonna happen in the ring, as loud as he can possibly yell it,” Rhodes said. “He calls it, for the first four rows, an interactive experience.”
The example he reached for came from their street fight at SummerSlam 2025 at MetLife Stadium, the match in which Rhodes took back the Undisputed WWE Championship. Late in the bout, Cena hoisted him up for an Attitude Adjustment from one announce table through another.
“He’s about to slam me with his big finishing move, which is the Attitude Adjustment, from a table to another table. So it’s highly dangerous, it’s going to hurt. We’re going to do it the safest way we can,” Rhodes said. “But you can hear him yelling at me while I’m on his shoulders that he can’t see, because my arm is over his eyes.”
Rhodes said he kept quiet in the moment out of respect, even as he was the one about to take the bump.
“I never spoke back to John. I never wanted to speak back, he’s a mentor to me,” Rhodes said. “But it was one of those moments where I thought, ‘Buddy, I’m the one doing this, I don’t give a s*it, just throw me.’ Like I’m not worried about, he’s screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘I can’t see.'”
Rhodes won that match to regain the title, capping a rivalry that ran through Cena’s retirement year. The two are on opposite sides of the card at this year’s SummerSlam, with Rhodes challenging CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship on August 1 and 2 in Minneapolis.
